Days 6-8 - Roncesvalles, Spain

It's snowing here! Terribly cold too. My socks are wet from walking up and down the courtyard. It looks pretty shocking, especially considering the weather was sunny and warm when I crossed the pass here and there was even some spring rain.

I've started voluntary work with my team at the Dutch Roncesvalles refugio. I took most of the laundry shifts in the basement. People bring their laundry in small crates with their names and bed numbers, we wash and dry it, and even fold it back up and return it to their beds. An all-in service for only € 2,70, which is much appreciated by most. Even though this room is subterranean it's not cold at all, in fact it's probably the warmest place in the building because of all the machines here.

Business is literally booming, it's crazy busy. They've had to open the old building as well to sleep all those pilgrims. There are so many I was still folding clothes last night after 10, most of it wasn't dry yet, so I'll be closing shop at 8PM from now on. Yesterday morning I woke up the pilgrims in the main dormitory by singing Taizé songs. Afterwards, some asked if there was a nun working there :) But they liked it a lot, so I might do it more often. This service comes free :)

There's a nice restaurant in the complex here. They only serve meat and seafood, so I've been eating only fish. After last year I've given up all hope of finding a proper veggie meal anywhere in Spain - these people mostly still haven't even heard of one :)

I guess my day-to-day experiences will be largely the same these next two weeks, so I won't have much to tell, except in the event of something extraordinary, and chances of that happening are slim to say the least. On the other hand, you never know... Anything could happen on the Camino.

To give you some idea of what this place looks like, I'll add the big picture from their website to this entry. This was obviously taken in better days ;)

Oh, and I've uploaded a few pictures with my Day 2 report (Lourdes), so if you haven't seen those (and you probably haven't), go check them out. I'll upload more pictures when I can, but the computer is unavailable most of the time.