The Goat Men of the Camino

The Goatmen on the Camino  2010

This story about my Camino journey would not be complete without mention of the numerous old German men also doing the Camino.
I had quite a few encounters with these fellows most of which were decidedly unpleasant. I was annoyed that there were so many of them.

Another pilgrim told me that this huge influx of old German men had something to do with the fact that a well know German radio star had recently done the Camino and written a book about it. This had generated a huge amount of interest in it for it was not well known in Germany before that time.

Well the end result of it, was a disproportionate number of them were on the Camino while I was there in 2010.

Now I like to think of myself as a fairly tolerant person. I recognise that we live in a world full of things that have the potential to annoy us and impinge on our personal space…babies crying, children’s tantrums, dogs barking, people snoring, pilgrims whispering, people making noises, noisy parties, loud music, wild teenagers creating a ruckus, traffic jams, flies, mosquitoes, ect ect and that is just part of life and it is pointless to get upset about such things…tolerance and patience that is my motto….

Not so with Germans…old Germans that is. They seem to think that any impingement upon their personages…no matter how slight… is a gross effrontery…yet they are oblivious to the effect that they sometimes have on others…I found this time and time again on the Camino…so it is obviously a national trait.

For example, the number of times we arrived at an albergue perhaps a little late but not by much…since the doors invariably shut at 9.00…and creeping as quietly as we could into a dorm and slipping every so quietly into bed we would be met with endless shhhhhhs and ‘please be quiet’ ect ect…. from the old German men…most of the time the lights had only just gone out. At one albergue I remember I was so upset by this carry on…I gathered my stuff and crept down into the communal kitchen and slept on the floor…with Rob of course.

One time…in a large dorm with bunk beds in it…I was on the top bunk getting dressed for the day…when I dropped a sock on the floor. I asked Rob to pick it up for me since he was just standing there…when this grumpy old man turned on me in a fury and said… “You are not zee only one here!” Rob finally cracked and shouted back… “and you are not the only one here”… for a minute there I thought things would come to a head…I thought Rob was going to punch him out but he didn’t.

Another time I found myself in a dorm with two old German couples and two women travelling together. Just after the lights went out the two women started whispering…I was not fussed but this old German man became irate and yelled at them to shut up…it was like five past nine or something…I could not believe it…they were whispering for all of about thirty seconds before he hit the roof.

And yet every morning they would be up before anyone else, making a noise while they dressed and packed their gear…too bad if anyone wanted to sleep in and no one complained about that.

And they took it all so seriously, the walk that is…not the spiritual side of it…never did I see them stop to smell the roses or admire some old statue or something…they would march on with their high faluting walking sticks, eyes fixed grimly ahead, not talking, not laughing.