The AEGEEan: Remember last year that AEGEE-León was honoured with the best evaluated Summer University? This year the antenna repeated the success and organised yet a top 10 SU, this time together with AEGEE-A-Coruña. Below, you can read about what made this Summer University possibly the greatest walk of many AEGEE peoples’ lives.
Daniele: I have always been in a strange relationship to Spain… Many people I know adore the country and its people. But for me the medal for best country has always been somewhere else in Europe… Until one day a friend started talking to me about the famous “Camino de Santiago” (St. James’ way) and I realized that my refusal to go for a SU in Spain was completely unfounded! And doesn’t AEGEE exist to break stereotypes?
I have always liked extremes and only one city wasn’t enough! Just going from one city to another by bus wasn’t enough. Replacing the bus for 10km? That is for weak Agora participants! I wanted something more! Let’s walk all the 100km between them!
Plus I wanted to do something with a deep story behind it, that in one way or another I had heard of.In one word, my first real pilgrimage! (Going to university praying to have passed an exam could fit the description – but with way less enthusiasm!) Sooner than I expected I found myself in León… Full of the joy I always have in my first day but with my feet whispering: “We are going to make you pay for this!”
First stop: León
Shoes still clean and shiny, we started doing a tour of this little city in the north of Spain. I could tell you marvels about its historical ruins, or how they would develop from a small church to a big cathedral, how its oldest monastery became first a church, then a prison, then a school, then a concentration camp, then an expensive hotel, but if I told you I am going to remember the city for its history I would be lying to you… Since my spirit, and everyone else’s, was focused on what was awaiting us next – it felt like taking a coffee before boarding for a plane… You don’t really appreciate the taste…
The Walk
The time came for us to leave our comfortable beds, and start our walk into the city of Santiago. The walk is not only measured in kilometers, or in how dirty your shoes become, how many socks you throw away, or the fast decreasing number of muscles in your body that don’t hurt yet.
The walk is measured in stamps!
It surprised me at first that this century-old tradition have much in common with modern age collection madness, but indeed you must have at least two stamps a day to get your “compostela”, the certificate that you get at the end of your suffering on the way.
Immediately groups of people tend to form depending on their speed, but most importantly (let the truth be told): their willingness to stop in every single shop/bar/restaurant/whatever it is to get one stamp.
If you ever ask yourself how someone can lose so many participants on a usual city tour you may begin to realize how it was to walk 6 to 7 hours every day!
Already seeing that my physical preparation doesn’t allow shining on “who is the fastest”, I go hunting for “who is the laziest pilgrim” and stop at every possibility to fill our own ‘booklet’.
And maybe it was the influence of the holy mission we had, maybe the joy we put into our walk, maybe the awe, that the path lead us from the small city to open fields and forest that made a little miracle happen to us!
I know someone will say this were the effects of the five bar stops in the preceding two hours, but I was there and I can assure that, however surrealistic it may seem, it was just incredible luck that made me experience the Way of St James just with the persons that suit me like chords in a guitar play! The good Polish girl who went a step beyond when she got a real heart shaped stigma on her leg, then Ana from Macedonia who lectured us about how she masters guitar hero in her spare time playing with Jesus, and a pyramid!
There are many measures made to survive such a trip. Anatoly avoided melting on the street with the help of an umbrella which he
always carried with him! Then there is Gabor who – after having shared with us particular interesting details about his SpongeBob underwear – nearly finished his journey ahead of time, thanks to hurting knees that stopped him from walking for most of what was a whole day.
Five total strangers, who lived pretty different lives, brought together for some lucky random selection and forged motivation letter, to live an incredible adventure that I hope created a long friendship!
During the walk the days are not like those of any normal SU, here the Albergue (the special hostel for pilgrim) will kick you out in the night if you make any sound after 23 (when the lights are turned off).
The Albergues are pretty much all your connection with modern world during the day, your chance to get a nice shower before going to sleep (pro tip for Pilgrims: never have a shower in the morning) and electricity to recharge your modern era idols.
But rest assured that all this good luck isn’t wasted, when in the morning no later than 6:30 everyone is awake, starting to pack and leave, while you’re only being woken up. All of this when departure time is 8:30 at the latest!
If you consider that even for a HUGE match like Real Madrid against Barcelona they let us return only at 23:30, youwill understand how strict this rule was!
Santiago & Finisterre
But your shoes can only become dirtier before you stop to care, and any distance is travelled one step at time, and it all ends.
After five days of rising early and sleeping early (I know it doesn’t sound like AEGEE at all) we reached the end of our pilgrimage! Maybe it was the 100km, maybe the pain in the feet, ankles, knees and back, maybe the few (11) bars you stopped at to get a stamp the day, but entering this old city is a feeling that no direct flight can give you!
After walking on small streets in the middle of the forests, through fields of sunflowers and abandoned houses Santiago looks like a metropolis, and the huge cathedral seems even more impressive. That is when you start to realize that maybe you have been a good pilgrim for too long, or maybe at the bottom of those heavy bags you carried around there is still something at the bottom, or maybe it is just the moral weight of the AEGEE-León flag stolen that made it feel like a stone. Whatever the reason is, it means that it is time to make the stamps in your life and start having a lot of fun!
We reached our final destination in Finisterre (the end of the land in Spanish) and here we watched the sun go down on our tiring muscle and the moon rise to the happy part!
A Coruña
Once again the organisers blew our mind with accommodation – huge rooms, a lot of showers, and more food than I could ever eat.
Here we are finally experiencing the good old way of a SU! Party till 4AM, and wake up at 7:30 which was not of much difference from 
the albergue. Then day time brought us surf lessons, a city tour, a visit to the Hercules tower, and relaxing on the beach, and of course the Tapas Rally!
We went around the city, hunting for bars, while performing embarrassing activities such as jumping into fountains and kissing strangers on the way.
What is more is that we were even invited to a special birthday, the AEGEE-A-Coruña Birthday!
All dressed in fancy clothes we celebrated the antenna with cake.
Final Words
I am sitting in this empty airport somewhere in Europe, looking at what I brought home:
A sea shell: the symbol of the Camino to Santiago.
A Compostela: A paper that says that I walked 100 km.
A pair of shoes now officially brown and broken: My Badge of Honor!
A bag of dirty socks: the proof that I walked those 100km!
A “best participant award”: the proof that not only I had fun, but I was able to share it!
And sharing is caring!
Written by Daniele Sarto, AEGEE-Treviso