Walk It Off. Erns Grundling
on the train as look up a cheap hotel in Bayonne.
Ahead of me in the queue there’s a girl with a ponytail and a green rucksack with something embroidered on it that looks like a flag or an emblem – a cluster of colourful blocks arranged diagonally. Could she be the first of my fellow walkers? I kind of hope we’re in the same compartment.
The compartment is tiny, three bunks stacked on top of one another on each side. The woman with the rucksack is not in my compartment after all; Tom, a tanned young French surfer who lives near Bayonne, is. He’s on his way home after a few months’ surfing in Australia. While we’re chatting, a middle-aged Frenchwoman and two Belgian girls also come in. The Belgians are on holiday in France; the Frenchwoman doesn’t talk much. None of them is heading for the Camino. The Belgians are astounded to hear that I’m tackling it alone.
The train slowly pulls out of the Gare d’Austerlitz, creaking and groaning. It’s so cramped that all we can do is lie like sardines in our bunks. The small talk stops. I go to brush my teeth. Standing in front of the mirror, I consider using the sleep apnoea plasters. No, I’ll be too self-conscious – the others will just have to endure my snoring.
When I get back to the compartment, the lights are already off. I might as well have used the Provent plasters.
* * *
Train journeys always take me back to Uitenhage, where I grew up. I often say that Uitenhage is the most beautiful song Bruce Springsteen will never write. The Boss would feel at home there, especially near Volkswagen, the area’s blue-collar mecca.
Sometimes, my father would take me to the nearby Willow Dam on Sundays, where we would ride three laps of the circular 300-metre track on a small steam engine, Little Bess.
My first trip on the Trans-Karoo, known these days as the Shosholoza Meyl, was in 2002 during my Honours year in journalism at Stellenbosch. Our annual class excursion that year was to Gauteng and we were able to persuade the lecturers to let us travel by train rather than by bus.
I was 22, full of plans and dreams and things. I remember the plastic bag with the five bottles that Gerjo, Borrie and I unpacked onto the little table in the compartment: Old Brown Sherry, Tassenberg, Smirnoff vodka, Bell’s whisky and VO brandy. Sometime during the night, as the train rolled past Makwassie, a joint also did the rounds.
* * *
Despite having had so little sleep for two days, I keep waking up in my bunk. So much for the soothing sound of wheels on rails – instead, there’s jangling and clattering. Sometimes it even feels like the coaches are being shaken from side to side.
At eight in the morning the train pulls into the station in Bayonne, almost 800 kilometres southwest of Paris. It feels good to get out of the stuffy compartment. I stumble out into the light drizzle and head for the station building. Once again I see the woman with the ponytail and rucksack with its flag.
“Hi, I guess you’re also walking the Camino?” I try to start up a conversation.
“Uh-huh.” (With a heavy American accent.)
“I’m Erns from South Africa.”
“Oh wow, that’s far from here! I’m Claire, from the US.”
“Ah. You’re also taking the train to Saint Jean?” I ask.
“Nah, I’m taking the bus.”
“Oh, okay. I’ve got a train ticket. I guess I’d better go sort it out.”
“Cool. Well … see you in Saint Jean.”
There’s already quite a crowd of walkers here – old and young, some in groups, an elderly couple here and there, and a few solitary souls with only their rucksacks and trekking poles.
According to the ticket I bought in advance on a French website, Capitaine Train, the train leaves for Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in less than two hours. I walk to the ticket office, where the man behind the counter – entirely predictably – seems prepared to help me in any language but English.
I have heard that you should just start speaking Afrikaans if this happens; it makes the French more sympathetic when they think you’re not a Brit or an American. So, I wave my ticket and mumble something in Afrikaans. It works! The man’s whole attitude changes. He explains in fluent English that the railway track to Saint Jean has been damaged in a storm and is currently being repaired, but that I can use my train ticket for the bus that leaves Bayonne at the same time.
But I need to find out something much more urgent from him: Where is the post office? I have to get rid of the laptop and cell phone right about now. Before boarding the bus to Saint Jean. I don’t have much time. It’s raining and I have no idea where to go.
After some vague directions and sympathetic hand gestures from the man in the ticket office, I head off down the street in search of the post office. The city is waking up. I walk past a few small shops and delis where old men sit reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. I could do with a coffee, but that will have to be my reward once the parcel is in the mail.
In the distance, on the other side of a bridge, a huge Gothic cathedral towers over the city. Half running, with my heavy red bag on my back, I spot a pharmacy and dash in to buy a few last-minute things: mosquito repellent, an ointment with a whole selection of insects on the box that looks as if it might protect me from bed bugs – one of the great potential evils of the Camino – and some cold and flu medicines that look like Grand-Pa headache powders. The pharmacist assures me, happily, that the post office is open today and only some hundred metres away.
Fortunately the woman behind the counter at the post office speaks good English. She looks slightly amused as I hastily unpack all my items on her counter: my laptop, the laptop’s cable, my iPhone and charger, three different wall plugs (I had to make sure that my laptop would work in Doha and in France), the Croxley notebook, a thicker notebook, two pens and J.C. van der Walt’s Slagtersnek book.
I find a five-kilogram box. For the last time, I see the glowing white apple with a bite out of it as I switch my phone off. I throw everything into the box. On it, I write the address of a person in Paris I do not know and have never had any contact with. I do not have Marcelle’s email address or contact number, but I can get those at the end of the Camino. I pay seven euros; the box is sealed and thrown into a huge bag.
And suddenly I am free.
* * *
My digital detox has begun, but the feeling of emancipation is short-lived. Before I even get back to Bayonne station I’m experiencing the effects of going cold turkey. My left hand keeps reaching spasmodically for my pocket, like a reflex, for the iPhone that’s no longer there.
The poor phone has been through so much it’s a wonder it’s still working. In October 2014 it fell into a toilet at the tourist bureau in Groot Marico. It had more than five hours of recordings of Go interviews on it that I hadn’t backed up. If I lost them, I’d be screwed.
Luckily I remembered a trick involving rice that would help to rescue a phone with water damage – the rice absorbs the moisture. I charged off to a café; before the cash register had even stopped ringing I’d plunged the phone into a bag of Tastic. The Bangladeshi behind the counter was a bit surprised.
It worked, but I did not take into account the fact that grains of rice could find their way into the phone’s sockets. Three grains of rice had a nice leisurely swell in the charging socket … This had me lying on my back on Egbert and Santa van Bart’s stoep in Groot Marico on an inflatable mattress, wearing a head torch, trying to pick the rice grains out with a needle. Mercifully my efforts were successful, but hell … the lonely places we take ourselves.
For the next forty days, no one who knows me (or doesn’t) will be able to phone or contact me. No one at work, not my parents or friends, not even the salespeople from those Unknown Numbers who phone you to try and sell you vehicle or funeral insurance or a cell phone contract you definitely don’t need. No Facebook. No WhatsApp. No Google.
I thought this would be easier