As Hape Kerkeling once said: "I'm off then"
The day begins after a short and restless night due to the excitement. We leave at 8am directly for Frankfurt Central Station. With the typical queasy feeling about the reliability of Deutsche Bahn, the nervousness increases by the minute. Will the train be on time? Will I arrive in Paris on time? Will everything go smoothly there so that I can catch my connecting train? In Paris I have to take the metro from Gar de l'Est station to Gare Montparnasse station and that only takes about an hour and 20 minutes. Luckily I only have to change trains in Bayonne, but here I only have 18 minutes to do that. Hopefully I'll be lucky and the trains will be on time.
The ICE is already waiting in Frankfurt, albeit on a different platform, but that's OK. It sets off, well ahead of schedule for Deutsche Bahn, with only a 4-minute delay.
I arrive in Paris 10 minutes late. Great. Now I have enough time to get to the other station and maybe get some fresh air, see the Eiffel Tower and quickly stop by Disneyland. A sentence with an X? That was probably nothing. Hundreds of people are queuing at far too few ticket machines at the metro. I stand in line for almost 40!! minutes to get a ticket for €2.10. I run to the train, which takes 20 minutes to the other station. The only problem is that the metro station in Montparnasse was almost 10 minutes away from the platform, even if I was running. Luckily, I arrive 4 minutes before departure and am relieved to have caught the connecting train.
It quickly becomes clear that the French railways want to be in no way inferior to the German railways and so the train gradually becomes 30 minutes late. 30 minutes? It was only planned to take 18 minutes to change trains. Yep. The first major problem is there, because the 6:20 p.m. train would be the last one to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port for today. On the train, I made my first pilgrim acquaintance in the on-board bistro. Mayoline from the Netherlands also has to go to SJPDP and so we had already arranged to meet on the platform after arriving in Bayonne so that we could then possibly share the taxi to SJDPD with more fellow sufferers. But shortly before arriving in Bayonne, the conductor made the first announcement in English: "to all the people traveling to SJPDP, your train will be waiting for you on track D". Phew. Relief and somehow a first good "sign" 🙏
The regional train is full of pilgrims and I immediately start talking to Marco. If my wild day today has already stressed me out, then I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. He left on Wednesday, three days ago. He comes from New Zealand and flew to France via Sydney, Dubai and London and then just sits next to me on the train. Unbelievable. Sitting opposite us is Joey, who has a similarly long journey. He comes from the north of Australia and went to Paris via Singapore and then continued on by train. There are really so many different nationalities represented and I'm a little surprised at the number of pilgrims. It should actually be relatively relaxed at this time of year.
When we arrive in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, we all walk the 400 meters to the pilgrim office in the center of the village, where I receive my first stamp and all the important information about the place and especially for the next day.
From now on, I have to collect two stamps every day. I get one at my accommodation and one I have to get along the way in a church, a pilgrim's office or in bars or restaurants.
My hostel is relatively small. It only has 2 bedrooms for 6 people each. After walking around the village and eating something, I'm really looking forward to going to bed 🙏
From tomorrow on it will be "buen camino" Tomorrow the hardest stage awaits me because the hostels are already fully booked. It means 25km uphill and 7km downhill with a total elevation gain of almost 2700 meters. Accordingly, I want to set off at 7am and hope to arrive around 4pm/5pm. I will report back 🤗
Good way
Cost of the day:
• Train: 294€ (1st class) • Metro: 2.10€ • Accommodation: 27€ including breakfast • Meals: 45€ (on the train and dinner in the restaurant)
