I’m Nathan. I’m solo traveling from Portugal to Amsterdam over the course of 3 weeks this Summer Late June to Mid July, and I’m hoping to make some friends along the way!
Portugal-Spain-France-Germany seems to be my basic route, but I really have no idea. 1st time to Europe.
Me: 43 Male, Skateboarder, writer, rapper/musician, Neuroscientist, photographer, gamer, artist. I’m a pretty cool dude despite being from the U.S. (low key this trip is me scouting places to live)
I speak English, a little Spanish, a little Japanese, tiniest bit of French.
I aim to find music, food and adventure. I’m a good vibe type of person without expectations.
Please reach out if you have any ideas, advice, destinations, couches, pianos, parties!
Ask questions! Dm me! comment here! I hope to hear from people
Here is my latest album- I’m the rapper/writer, some production
Neuroscientist? You say that so low key…
Fourth place down in importance… Most of us are musicians because we can’t do something like that…lol
Is that what you do for work?
Shouldn’t you go where the best places for that are? I ask because my brother is a neuroscientist too, and I know it is not something you can just find work anywhere… it is pretty specialized. He is in Boston and I think there are only a couple places in America he could do what he does.
Hah, I’ve no doubt you could be a neuroscientist if that is what you wanted to do! I’m not that smart, I just know a bunch of stuff about brains and science
I can also work as a biology teacher or science teacher if I can’t find anything in neuro. I don’t need a top tier job, just enough to keep funding my music addiction
One idea might be to walk the Camino Portugues into Spain, then follow the Camino Frances through Spain into France.
This is one of several info sites on Camino Portugues
You don’t really have to go for the Compostela Pilgrims Certificate but if you walk this route, getting a pilgrim passport and collecting stamps in it can add some fun to your journey. Walking the Camino Portugues all the way to Santiago de Compostela - and collecting the stamps - would qualify you for the cert for sure.
Then after you arrive in Santiago de Compostela, and presumably stay at least overnight, you would take the Camino Frances in the opposite direction, from the perspective of the peregrinos (pilgrims). You would end up in Saint Jean Pied de Port, France. I heard there is a foot route that continues all the way to Holland from Saint Jean Pied de Port but I’m not so familiar.
We walked the part of Camino Frances from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela.
There were plenty of cafes, restaurants, and albergues (hostels for peregrinos) along the route - if we passed one, we were sure to arrive at another in another 5 km. We were there around the March-April timeframe so there weren’t too many peregrinos on the Camino, and so we never had trouble finding a room at any of the albergues, without reserving in advance. At the time, a room went for less than 10 Euros per person, except the couple of times we splurged - eg 45 Euro for a 3-bed room with private bathroom in a converted castle keep.
The one glitch in our journey was at one of the albergues - in Arzua I think. It was a large and lovely house - but the person who checked us in forgot to turn on the heating. I tried calling him up but from what little Spanish I could understand he seemed to indicate he was too busy working 3 jobs or whatever to come back to turn on the heat. Later on another group of peregrinos arrived. I told them what happened then one of them got on the phone withe albergue manager/attendant/whatever and said in Spanish something like “listen buddy, I am from Madrid and if you don’t come and turn on the heat I’ll call so and so”. As for our little group, we were assigned a room with like 10 bunk beds so we each took 3-4 blankets from the extra beds to try to go to sleep with some warmth. We woke up in the middle of the night sweating buckets after the heat finally got turned on.
We went on to encounter the Primitivo Gang (because they said they walked the Camino Primitivo) several more times. We also saw a young family (young couple with little kids) multiple times because we’d pass them on the Camino but they’d make up for their slow walking speed by walking for longer time and distance. When we picked up our pilgrims’ certificates, this one guy we’d seen before in one of the albergues but never breathed a word to us suddenly hugged each of us with tears of joy. So yeah, we met quite a variety of characters on the Camino.
Several establishments offered a “pilgrim’s meal” for 9 Euro which was 2 huge courses of food with choice of water, soda, or wine for drink included.
I kinda wished I brought hiking poles for the steeper bits of the Camino. Not for the ascent but for the descent. I didn’t get hurt but would have been nice to have those poles for better control going down.
