A pilgrim's story: Sometimes I cry
“It is a truth, a reality that I am almost there, and I am proud of it too. The walking goes much better than in the beginning. Then I couldn´t have walked up this mountain so fast. But it can´t be true when you have been on the road for three months, away from home, experience all these things, that everything is the same as it was. I can´t believe that.” On the way I had heard about Ulrich, the Swiss man who started in the Jura, a small, stocky man with a little beard. “I look forward to see everybody again and to tell them about my journey. On the other side I am afraid that I might have conflicts with my family, my wife and children, as I see things differently now than before.”
“Partly it is an adventure to see and do what I have not done before. I live in Switzerland, I know France and a bit of Italy. The first time I go to Spain, I go on foot. That is almost impossible in our contemporary time. The motivation for making this trip at all. My wife acknowledges that there is more, but I don´t believe in God anymore. We have been very lucky in our life. I had an accident and broke a vertebra in my neck, so I am already living on borrowed time. We were lucky with our family and children. I am still thankful for that every day. So we had this selfish thought. We are people looking after others day and night. We help others if we can and when people have a problem they come to see us. We listen and we help them, but we are a little bit tired of it all. We are retired and in December I will be seventy three, my wife is a year older. So we said let´s do this for ourselves.”
Ulrich left together with his wife at the beginning of July, but after a week his wife got serious problems with her knee. She had to stop and together they took the train back home. “We held a family council and with our children we decided that I would continue. So I took the train back and started walking again.” He updated his wife on a daily base with his mobile phone. “Yesterday I was talking to my wife and I told her how beautiful it was to be here, the weather, the mountains, yesterday was an exceptional beautiful day. Then she told me, listen, sometimes I have to cry that I can´t experience this.” Ulrich sighs and the sadness is audible in his voice.