I started writing this post by telling a long and boring tale of what we did while in Frankfurt. After reading it, all I could think about was what rubbish it all was.
Visiting Frankfurt was about friendship. Katja has become a friend on the same level as my old friends like Leighton, Renee, Meg Nancy, or Bob. It’s odd how that happens, I can’t explain it. How do you know that someone will be your friend? I knew it from the very beginning.
I told her the day after we arrived that I knew we would be friends, she said “you did?”. I don’t know if she was surprised by my statement or if she thought I was out of my mind, maybe both.
I think that the Camino accelerated the friendship process for me. Often when you meet people, there’s a sort of invisible wall that goes up, instinctively probably. We don’t want to expose ourselves for fear of being rejected or hurt in some way. A month on the Camino, for me, dropped those barriers.
I’ve told my friends over the years how important they are to me and how much I love them. I believe that personal candor has been rewarded with friendships lasting in one case, over forty years.
I’m happy that Susan got to meet Katja, I wish she had more time to see what a wonderful person she is. I believe she knows that she’s an important person in my life and that the Camino allowed that to happen.
Who can explain how a random meeting on a lonely hill in the northwest of Spain with a total stranger would lead to a friendship that has now spanned a year, even though the Amigos are separated by land and sea spanning 8000km/5000 miles. As with my oldest friend Bill, distance doesn’t seem to matter, surely not to me.
The best part of our visit, for me, was the evening we all spent over dinner at Katja’s home. Visiting in someone’s home is very personal, they feel comfortable enough to allow you into their space and, she made us feel like we’d been there many times before.
We talked about books and travels. Susan allowed us to do a Camino binge, I’m forever grateful for that as I was dying to hear about Katja’s adventures on her latest Camino. The pictures made it even more real.
Katja made a simple but wonderful meal of pasta with a sauce a ’la Katja. It was quite tasty but, as I’ve written in both my blog and in my essay, it was the people around the table that mattered to me. Moment’s like these are what I will always remember.
Susan and I departed Frankfurt and our friend Katja drove us to the Frankfurt train station and like the little sister, mother hen…friend that she is, she delivered us to our coach safely.
As she was checking on the web about our arrival station in Berlin, I walked out to the entry to the coach to see if there was a problem and she told me she’d just texted me that our station in Berlin was very near our hotel.
I thanked her again, for all that she’d done, and I hugged her again and told her hasta luego, I could not say good-bye, adios. The same sadness that I’d experienced a year before when I departed Spain, leaving my Camino family behind, rushed back into my mind. In this case, it’s a member of my Camino tribe who’s become a friend or, maybe even a family member.
Since the Camino, I’ve tried to become more open and honest about my emotions and feelings. As I was writing this post, I needed to take that to heart. I will miss my friend Katja and I look forward to maintaining our long-distance friendship. I hope that we can pull off a return to the Camino next year to walk the Inglés. If we’re lucky, we’ll have a merry band of Pilgrims from around the world joining us.
So, for my friend Katja, thank you Miga for this past weekend. Thank you for allowing me to walk up that hill in Finisterre with you. And, most of all, thank you for being my friend!