Good hello!

It’s now 2026 - it’s been a long time since I sat down to update this newsletter. If you’re somehow still here and still reading this: thank you! Every time one of you popped up and said that you enjoyed reading thing, well, it made me smile.

Right now, I’m comfortably ensconced in a lovely old hotel across the street from the train station in Sarria, Galicia, Spain. Temperatures are comfortably above freezing; the skies are a washed-out Tadao Ando concrete grey. It isn’t raining at the moment, but it should start up again any minute now. Traditionally, if you want a compostela, or a certificate that you’ve completed the pilgrimage to Santiago, you have to start here and walk the last 115km to Santiago on foot… and that’s exactly why I’m here.

I traveled to Cluny, France on July 10, 2025 and started walking towards Santiago the next day; I stopped walking upon arriving in Rocamadour on August 11 as the temperatures were too high to continue, in the low 100s Fahrenheit. Afterwards, I visited friends near Bergerac for a few nights, took a break in Paris for a few days, and then continued on to Berlin for nearly a week - Folsom Europe was calling after a month of celibacy on the trail, what can I say? I had planned to take the train back to Bayonne - a day train to Paris and a night train from there - but came down with a cold (OK, actually kennel cough or bear flu, I think you’d call it), so switched plans, flew to Bordeaux, slept near the airport, and then stayed two nights in Dax to recover from that illness.

Finally, I took a train to St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, which is where most Americans start their Camino; the trail was absolutely mobbed with pilgrims from then on, much, much worse than anywhere I’d seen in France. I… did not enjoy that, so stopped walking again just a few days later in Pamplona, took the train to Madrid, hung out with two friends there, then rented a car, drove back to northern Spain, and did day trips around the Camino as I had prepaid bookings that I didn’t want to lose for hotels and dinners.

To sum up:

Cluny to Rocamadour 30 walking days
Lacapelle to Moissac 2 walking days
St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Pamplona 3 walking days

Total 35 days, 800 km

Throw in the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage and you’re looking at about 1,975 km walked in 2025. That… is not bad - but I did feel like I didn’t quite finish last year, so I decided to come back and finish it up in early 2026.

As luck would have it, American Airlines sold me a ticket from Palm Springs to London and a return flight from Santiago de Compostela for only $469.11. Of course, no one really wants to hike in Galicia in January, but for such a good price, how could I resist? Throw in a visit to the Hamburg bear party (“Bärenpaadie” in the local dialect) as well as a few nights visiting my Dad in London on the way, and boom, you have a nice 2.5 week trip on deck.

The flight over to London was fine: for the first time in my life, I splurge and shelled out $329 extra for an upgrade to Premium Economy, which was pretty much worth it, if only because the seat was just big enough to let me get some sleep on the way to London. The little things like somewhat fancier food (actually really good, served on china, but I still don’t love drinking wine out of a plastic cup) and an amenity kit (nice, but totally unnecessary) are fine, but it’s all about that slightly wider seat that reclines just a bit more - I actually did fall asleep, although there were a few things that interrupted that (a code red medical emergency that thankfully didn’t require a diversion to somewhere in eastern Canada; the passenger behind me using my headrest as a grab bar to hoist himself out of his seat).

Upon landing in London, I set a new personal best record for making it to the Superloop 7 bus stop: under 19 minutes from touching down at Heathrow. The plane parked quickly, they opened the doors right up, there were no delays deplaning, no line at the UK border, the e-gates worked right the first time, I had no checked bags to wait for, and boom, I was outside in the cold, grey, damp London winter before I knew it. Better yet, the bus didn’t have a functional fare box, so I didn’t have to buy a ticket. Score!

I won’t go into details here, but my Dad and I had a lot of work to do this week; I stayed in south London near his flat the whole time, spending my days with him catching up and doing work. I was also happily able to make it into central London to meet friends at the Kings Arms for a few beers, followed by some American-esque barbecue on Friday night, which was delightful (the company, not the meat). I was also able to catch up with my old friends Adam and Keith at their place for a bit - but before I knew it I was back on the bus to Heathrow for one last night in England, a brief in-person encounter with IML 25 (yay!), and then a quick, uneventful flight to Hamburg, with no issues at the EU border.

The Hamburg bear party is pretty much the biggest bear event in Germany, I’d argue; I’ve never seen anything so enormous, although Cologne certainly comes close. I had a fantastic week there, with plenty of time hanging out with old friends as well as meeting a few more. Mind you, I’m generally of a mind to keep the overall salaciousness level of this newsletter as a minimum - but what the heck, why not go into details a bit, right? Every German bear weekend seems to inevitably have a sauna day as part of it; I got there 90 minutes before it opened after agreeing with friends that that would be a reasonable time to go get in line. Thankfully, the sun was out, it wasn’t ridiculously cold, and it was fun as hell waiting in line with a bunch of other bears. My buddy Kyle and I, two tall Danes, a couple from Bremen, a couple from Hanover, more Germans, more Danes, a handsome Kiwi… you name it. I’m more of a social than a sexual kind of guy, so I honestly really enjoyed that part of the day… but it was frankly also pretty damn good inside; the sauna was a really good one, so I had a legit sauna before standing around in a towel drinking Apfelschorle and chatting even more with a number of handsome men. And yeah, okay, I was also very lucky to head downstairs to the sexy part of the sauna with a couple of them - there are private rooms (turns out the beds are too short and too narrow for two men my size, but hey, it sure was fun trying!) as well as all kinds of overcrowded, someone uncomfortable (for me) areas… I had a hell of a good time with a very handsome cub, but I always find it distracting when I have to keep stopping what I’m doing to tell folks not to touch me or interrupt. Even so: it was the one opportunity we had to fool around with each other, and it was damn good, interruptions notwithstanding.

All kinds of other good stuff happened: museums (oh my God, the Hamburg art museum is off the charts; they had an enormous Neo Rauch painting I could have stared at for hours), dinner with friends (I had really good Yemeni food with two wonderful men from the Rhineland), shopping (I needed a couple of waterproof items for the last few days on the Camino as the forecast looks pretty bad for the next week, so hello, Decathlon), and Korean fried chicken of all things from the local Edeka supermarket, repeatedly (yum). And the finally the big party night, which was across the street from my hotel, so you could skip the entire line to get in as you didn’t need to check a coat (brrrr, that 90 seconds outdoors was pretty cold, though!).

For someone who spent his first 52 years on this planet being very, very hesitant to go into bars, go to parties, or be in any kind of a social situation, I’m always surprised that it’s actually kind of fun now. Sure, the party was insanely large, overheated and overcrowded, with hundreds and hundreds of woofy bears, but I had a damn good time repeatedly running into all kinds of friends I’d met over the years.

Finally, after all of that, I wound up doing something completely unexpected. I’d agreed to go home with two friends of mine after the party - I mean, go back to their place in Hanover for Sunday night to get a chance to see a bit of their city and to catch up in a more intimate setting). However, I had also remembered to catch up on one of my hobbies while I was in Hamburg - it’s a long story, but as a teenage exchange student in West Germany, I had happened across an excerpt by a German novelist that struck me as interesting, which led to me reading pretty much everything written about Arno Schmidt, if not most of the books he’d actually written (I’ve read most of his essays, radio programs, etc., just not his actual novels). It’s a little funny to think about it now, but a lot of my college years were spent in the basement of the UC Berkeley library reading absolutely everything I could in the field, which culminated in a visit to the first ever Arno Schmidt conference in Portland, Oregon, in May 1991; I was 21 years old at the time and I think the only American there other than John Woods, Schmidt’s translator, but I digress.

Schmidt was born in Hamburg on January 18, 1914. This year, January 18 falls on a Sunday; the Arno Schmidt Foundation published Schmidt’s diaries in late 2025, so they set up a reading in Celle, a town near Hanover, where Schmidt died in 1979, to celebrate his birthday as well as the publication. Susanne Fischer, the editor, would be there to read from the diaries as well as Jan Phillip Reemtsma, who was Schmidt’s patron as well as the financial backer of the Arno Schmidt Foundation after his death. (He’s also unfortunately famous for having been kidnapped in the 1990s.) Given the coincidence - hey, a Schmidt evening with two people I’d met in 1991, not too far from Hanover, where I’d be staying, my host generously offered to drive me to the event and accompany me for the evening).

I bought us tickets, Klaus-Peter drove me to the castle theater in Celle, and we couldn’t find an unlocked door. Whoops, my bad, turns out it was at a different address. He drove over there, it wasn’t obvious where anything was (it looked like it was an abandoned hospital, maybe, with lots of numbered buildings), and we wandered around in the dark until aha! we found the right building, exactly 1 minute before the evening was to begin, and found that the door was locked. Damn! Luckily, a staff member from the venue who was driving off saw us and let us in, sneaking us in the side door as the moderator began the introduction to the evening.

As a certified Schmidt anorak (if that’s the right word… Schmidtspotter, perhaps?), I could not have been happier. Plus, there was that wonderful feeling of having come full circle in my own life; the last time I was in a situation like that, I was a 21 year old college student; I am now a 56 year old retiree. 80 minutes later, things had wrapped up - and I thankfully had a chance to briefly say hello. Susanne was as kind as always, somehow remembered me from 1991, and signed my copy of Schmidt’s diaries for me, even:

We drove back to Celle, I had a cheese sandwich, and dropped off to sleep quickly, thinking about how lucky I’ve been to have lived this far and to have met so many fascinating people along the way - none more so than Dan, my marmot, my partner, and the one person more than any other who’s made all of this possible. We’ve been together nearly 32 years at this point; he’s graciously put up with my nonsense far more than I have any right to expect (Schmidt books taking up a huge amount of space in our library, me fucking off to walk the Camino for way too long) for decades and hey, I am beyond thankful.

Monday was fairly straightforward: a lie-in, breakfast with my two friends (thanks again, KPL and PR!), and then a coffee at the train station before heading back to Hamburg airport. Given that it was Deutsche Bahn, the train was delayed half an hour or so, but I still managed to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare - thankfully there were no lines at security, so everything was super easy.

The Iberia flight was as uncomfortable as they usually are; unlike other airlines, they seem to have less seat pitch than anyone else. (Even Spirit had more legroom for me.) Thankfully, I was able to move to a row with an empty middle seat after asking two flight attendants for permission - but of course, the 5 foot 3 woman in the row ahead of me reclined her seat immediately, so it was a pretty tight 3 hours to Madrid, where I had just enough time to blow $25 on a ham sandwich and a glass of wine before… going back to the same gate to get on the same plane with the same crew, who were genuinely happy to see me again, so much so that they immediately offered me a free upgrade to an exit row seat as well as two more ham sandwiches for €5, which I didn’t need but was really happy to have regardless.

An hour later, in Santiago de Compostela, it was once again record timing for me: off the plane quickly, run through the airport, find a taxi, and shortly afterwards I was at my hotel, the oldest one in Spain, the Hostal dos Reis Católicos. It’s under renovation at the moment, so the door isn’t where it used to be, so the taxi driver and I kind of wound up laughing about how he insisted on driving me about 20 meters back to the new, temporary door - and then the bellhop joined in. It was a wonderful welcome back to Spain, really - it always feels good when someone laughs at some dumb thing I say, like being old, but not SO old that I really needed to be driven back those 20m to the new, temporary entrance.

Hotel staff were beyond welcoming; I was shown upstairs to my single room, where I fell asleep quickly, waking up to 50+ messages from friends who’d all just felt a big earthquake back home in California, whoops. I had a nice, long lie-in, repacked everything into two bags (my actual backpack to take on the Camino this week plus another bag filled with heavy stuff I won’t need for the week, like that Arno Schmidt book), had a cup of tea, and then headed down to breakfast. True to Paradores form, it was incredibly good; homemade churros and chocolate, jamon iberico, fresh pineapple, and the best hotel coffee I think there can possibly be, served with a jug of fresh steamed milk as well. Delicious.

The staff graciously agreed to keep my heavy bag for the week, and I walked off into the rain with my backpack towards the train station. This was also kind of a temperature test to gauge my comfort level; I intentionally left my huge winter jacket at the hotel to see if I would be okay with my normal hiking jacket, which was fine, but my arms were a little bit chilly, so I stopped by Decathlon on the way to the train station to buy a ‘ski shirt’ with nicely insulated arms… and oh sure, an umbrella as well, why not? They’re cheap.

The train was a bit delayed and then stopped short of the next station before finally arriving ten minutes late, meaning a 0 minute connection to the next train - but thankfully staff held the connection. I ran alongside a Dutchman hiking the Camino and San José, CA resident who’d just moved to Galicia a few years ago - whew, the Dutchman held the train door as we older men caught up with him. Sweet. Not too much later, I arrived in Sarria, where I’m writing this now. Dinner isn’t for another four hours, so I’m going to wander into town to the Mercadona supermarket, have a look around, and get some snacks for the week (okay, mostly water bottles… and maybe a half bottle of wine for the room, hic). I’m a little bit excited to get walking again tomorrow, but also not super enthused about the weather (rain, wintry mix, and more rain forecast). Mostly, though, I’m happy that I’m getting closer to the end of my Camino… and that I’m less than a week away from being home with my marmot again. Yay!