Day 8: Albergue Gerekiz to Bilbao, plus a death threat (29,1k)

The next morning, I leave the hostel alone at 8:30. I need to be away from people. GIB left at 6:30 with a head lamp on. Lucia is still sleeping, Gertrude is doing whatever Gertrude does between waking up at 6 and leaving at 9:30. I walk fast. I pass two Korean girls. Woodland. It’s beautiful and smells like Ecuador. The Eucalyptus. Then suddenly road. Road and road. Some farms still and then two small towns where I see other pilgrims having coffee and refill my water bottle. I can’t afford coffee but am already tired after 10k so buy some bread and sardines in spicy sauce and eat it on a bench in the town square, close enough to the other cafe-worthy pilgrims to continue our conversation about where to sleep in Bilbao. They book a €38 a night room. I wish. Instead, I book a €14 a night room for two nights and walk on, dreaming about my lie-in and the Guggenheim Museum and pintxos and the freedom of a big city.

Today’s walk is difficult and ugly. Most runs along a motorway. Thankfully, there’s cloud cover – and still, as I finally walk into Bilbao, at four it in the afternoon with everything hurting, the sign outside the pharmacy says 38 degrees. My richer friends disappear to their expensive hotel and I walk what looked like ten easy minutes from Old Town to the town centre. They are not easy. My feet ache like never before and it’s all uphill through the kind of streets you find in all major cities around the central station. At least, I reason, I’ll have no trouble finding weed here.

The hotel is an automatic affair. Check in online, get sent a few codes, enter without speaking to a human. In my 8-bed dorm is just one other person, a big man in his forties, which feels super weird. I get undressed, shower, make my bed and lie down to have a nap, majorly missing the pilgrim community of the albergues.

Thankfully, two more guests enter as I’m drifting off, so in the end I half-sleep for about an hour even though the room is loud. In albergues, people are always quiet and respectful no matter what time of day. I guess cause we’re all exhausted and know the need for rest all too well. Here, people come and go, slam locker doors, and talk loudly in different languages.

Anyway I nap and then Lucia and I head back into Old Town and meet up with a few other pilgrims for pintxos and drinks. It’s okay but nothing mindblowing. GIB shows me pics of pintxos from San Sebastián. Pintxo heaven. I knew I should’ve got over my self-hate sooner.

Me and Lucia head back to the hotel around 11pm, both happy to have company for the walk. Still, I remember living in Barcelona and Sevilla and how their historical centres all kind of looked the same – gorgeous buildings, swathes of American tourists and a corresponding number of bland, overpriced restaurants for them to eat basic tortilla at. Like Barcelona, Bilbao’s historic centre does have some bars that look pretty fun – for example, one where GIB and I approach some hippie-goths (that particular Spanish breed that favours dreadlocks, black lipstick, piercings and harem trousers) to ask for weed, and they give us the name of another bar some five minutes away, which I promptly add to my Camino del Norte Google Map – but I still feel pretty happy that we’re sleeping in a more interesting part of town. If I were living here, that’s probably where I’d be.

Well, my feelings of superiority about sleeping in the cheapest hostel in the cheapest part of town are about to ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-change. First of all, as I enter my dorm, I’m surprised to find the overhead lights fully on. A man is sitting on the bottom bunk next to mine. I’m drunk so who am I to judge. But this guy is Drunk with a capital D. Also, gives off homeless and slightly mentally deranged vibes, but then again, both those labels could fully be applied to me as well depending on time of day. So I ask kindly if he would mind the lights going off as it’s “rather late,” polite to the bone. He doesn’t really reply so I turn them off and go to bed.

Drunk dude sits silently in the dark for a while, mumbling what sounds like semi-coherent prayers to himself in Spanish. Then he gets up and turns the lights back on. This incenses the very heavy man sleeping in the bunk above me, and they have a heated exchange in Spanish that leads to the lights, eventually, going off again. I lie down to sleep, but keep my glasses on just in case, something I haven’t done since sharing a room with my best friend Cattis and a very fast Tarantula in Thailand in 2009. It’s a weird feeling. Earplugs and an eyemask are clearly out of the question. Sure I want sleep, but I also want to stay alive.

Our boy sits in the dark for a bit. Lies down for a bit. More mumbling. A few more guests enter, which is reassuring. One other woman – thank God. More big men. The potentially homeless and mentally ill man – let’s just call him Frank – gets back up, fiddles with a locker for a bit, keeps mumbling. Gradually, almost beautiful in its seamlessness, the semi-coherent prayers turn into semi-coherent self-pep-talk. Frank is not happy about the “hijos de puta” telling him what to do, like when to turn if his putas lights, and he’s about to let them know.

He starts shouting at the man who was first to want the lights off. A new guy gets involved. Bitter-sounding spats in Basque ensue. Frank starts spitting on the floor and rambling about getting a “cuchillo,” which, not so reassuringly, means “knife.” And so finally, the guy who’s been speaking to him in Basque decides – Frank, you’re out. I ask if he wants any help; an offer he predictably (and thank-God-for-me-ly) turns down. He gets the guy out, and I wait for him to return for about half an hour. Room access is through codes not keys, so technically, Frank could come back.

But neither of them do, and eventually, I fall asleep.

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