I unwittingly ended up at an Austrian Mass this morning at - get this - Dom St. Jakob's, in front of which was a sign in a glass bulletin case with the familiar little yellow coquille de Saint-Jacques and a blue stripe: Jakobs Wieke Tirol, it said. How appropriate! As I`ve said to some friends this trip, this is another Camino for me. Travelling light with everything I own on my back, being at the mercy of others to help me find my way.
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| Can't seem to get away from the Camino de Santiago. Here I am in the mountains of Austria and there it is again: le coquille de Saint Jacques! |
I was standing on a corner near the Imperial Hapsburg palace in Innsbruck this morning when an old lady came over to me. No English but yes, French. She`d worked as an Aupere (aupare?) in Paris as a young woman and remembered her French so we immediately made friends. She told me there was a service in process at the Church behind the palace where there was a music. She wasn`t kidding - a full military band was performing all the parts of the mass and accompanying the hymns at the front of Jakob`s Kirche, a high-vaulted baroque edifice. A photo of what it looked like after it was bombed Dec 16, 1944 was on a display at the back. It had been rebuilt so you couldn't tell it had been almost completely demolished by bombs. Amaying to think most of the places I have visited this trip saw the worst horrors of that war.
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| Fully restored after having been bombed in the Second World War |
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| Procession after mass. |
So here I go again on the Camino. Now, starting the conference in Salzburg. All is well. Strange to be staying in a proper hotel with a room to myself instead of a multi-bunk hostel. I will miss evening conversations with cute Swedish guys in the kitchen, though... ; )
Tchoosze!
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