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Camino De Santiago - Day 11
Time of Visit: October 10, 2022
I had been blessed with fantastic weather up to this point, but today my luck ran out. I would have to don my $1 Target battle armor to protect myself from the elements.
I had met another American girl the previous night at the hostel, and after about an hour of walking together, we came across a gaggle of 12-year-old schoolgirls from an international school in Madrid. They whispered and stole glances in our direction, fascinated by the Cool American English they had heard in movies and TV but evidently had little real-life exposure to. One brave girl marched up beside us and asked my partner whether we were American, and she and her friends just about exploded with excitement when she found out that we were, in fact, American.
The next two hours were a stark reminder of America's cultural hegemony over the rest of the world. One girl was visiting America later this year for the first time and had compiled a bucket list of destinations based on her favorite YouTubers' vlogs: Target, Dollar Tree, TJ Maxx, Walmart, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Best Buy. Another girl told me that she loved math and aspired to work as a cashier at the Stop & Shop next to the summer camp she had attended in Westchester County. (I made her promise me to do something better with her life.) A third admitted that her English wasn't very good, but that she watched every Addison Rae video regardless.
The drizzle finally tapered off around noon, allowing me to take off my rancid sweat-stained poncho and enjoy an orange juice at a cafe. With just 40km to Santiago, every village at this stage was well-maintained and thoroughly commercialized, and the road felt less like a pilgrimage route than it did a manicured path through a park, albeit a huge park with a ton of history.
The wonderful thing about the Camino, though, is that every mile still has something to make the weary traveler happy, whether it's a beautiful view, curious animal, cup of coffee, or, failing everything else, genuinely kind pilgrims walking by your side.
song of the day: Haruka Nakamura - Faure - although this track is an anomaly in Nakamura's discography of ambient piano works, his Nujabes-inspired hip-hop production soothes the soul.