I’m sitting at the courtyard of a youth hostel in Arles, France. I’m typing on my phone via my MacBook through phone mirroring. I can’t connect to the internet because hostel wifis still suck in 2025 and it seems my phone provider won’t allow me to hotspot while roaming.
Many days have passed since I last wrote, not for lack of events but quite the opposite, a glut of experience that seemed to find no end, and is still unfolding.
Last week most of the team was on holidays, so I worked from home on Tuesday since I would be alone at the office. When the end of the day was near I wanted to attend my yoga class, so I hurriedly left the house to attend my practice. I had already decided to go to the smoke club afterwards, though I can’t say it was entirely conscious, I grabbed some cash which I never carry and that’s the only payment method they accept, so when I noticed I was carrying the money I thought “ok you really want to do this”.
After my practice I went to the smoke club, and as usual spent the least time possible at that sad place (it’s dark and moody, people staring at their phones and the staff is perpetually spaced out). I left and walked home, (about an hour away). As I walked home I recall doing some breathing exercises so my mind wouldn’t wander too far, inhaling four steps and exhaling the other four.
When I got home I noticed I was not carrying my keys. I went through my backpack perhaps a dozen of times, then I roamed the streets looking for a piece of plastic I could use to slide through the door frame, as I never lock my door. I didn’t find anything adequate so I entered a store to try to find something, but I didn’t. I kinda couldn’t believe my survival skills, surely there had to be something in the 24h supermarket at the corner of my apartment, but in my hazy state it didn’t occur to me to buy some sort of card (I wasn’t carrying any).
I thought about the keys… I could have either left them at the smoke club, or never took them with me and left them behind, in the apartment. I wanted to discard option #1 so I grabbed a city bike and pedaled back to the smoke club, leaving the bike outside. The staff didn’t know anything about forgotten keys, I went where I had sit before and there were two young gentlemen from Portugal who were very kind looking through their seats and on their table. I knew for sure I hadn’t left them there.
I left the club and walked back home, but sort of wandering. Instead of walking south I walked east, and after half an hour walking, when I got to a large avenue, I realized my mistake. It came to me in a flash: I had left the bike parked outside the club. Jeez, my mind must be melting, I thought, and I walked back to the club where I found the bike. I had exceeded the grace time by an hour and something and paid 7 euros of surcharge.
By the time I biked back home it was already 12:30, with no adequate tool in sight I thought it would be better to wait until next day to ask the superintendent if he had keys for my apartment. With great embarrassment I wrote V. asking if she could host me. She was awake and said yes. I slept in her spare bedroom, and early in the morning I asked if it was OK to slip into her bed. She welcomed me.
I went to my building to meet the superintendent. He didn’t have keys, but gave me a nice flexible card I could use to try to open my door. I couldn’t. I wrote my boss at work about my problem, he suggested a plastic sheet. I went to a paper store and got one of those plastic folders. Again, no luck. Meanwhile, I wrote the real estate agency that rented me out the apartment. Everyone was on vacation and they didn’t have keys, I would have to call a locksmith if I wasn’t able to open it myself, they said.
I had lunch with V. I confessed how it had happened: I indulged in weed, I’m sorry I know I wasn’t supposed to do this. She was soft on me, telling me it was OK, she expected me to do it as last as possible and she gave me an x-ray of her foot. X-rays are particularly good for opening unlocked doors, and yet we couldn’t slide it through, even with the help of the superintendent. It was then that I called the locksmith, who came with a couple of professional plastic sheets, but not even him could open the door. He said he would need to drill it. I said I would need to contact my landlord to see if it was OK. The real estate agency finally gave me the number of the owner. I called him and he was a pleasant man. He explained that he was not in Madrid at the time, but he had an employee who could put the key in a security box next to my building, I just had to wait two hours.
Meanwhile I had dinner with V. We played a board game about intimate questions. “If there was anything you would change about your childhood, what would that be?” and that sort of questions. We told each other a couple of stories which we didn’t know from each other. Finally the message came in: the key is in the security box. We played an extra hour or so, and I left to sleep in my apartment.
The next day V. wrote: I'm thinking about going to Porto, would you like to come? "Then you can continue walking towards Santiago". She knew I wanted to walk on my holidays. This didn't appeal me at the time, I said I was very busy catching up with the worked I missed on my day locked out, that I didn't have the space to think it out, so please plan your trip without me. She said OK. A while later she wrote me again: I've settled on Marseille, last call. Perhaps the exoticism of France appealed to me more but I immediately said yes, and I noticed how this simple change of destination made me commit to going despite any reservations about schedule.
At Marseille we went to the calanques on an organized boat tour. It was beautiful. The city, however, is in a sad state. At times it reminded us of the bad neighborhoods we know in Latin America. We are also perhaps spoiled by Madrid which is super clean and safe by Europe's standards (which are already excellent).
On Sunday V. flew back to Madrid and I took a 1h train to Arles, where the camino starts in France. I'm almost grieved by the quality of this entry, but I write it to remember what happened in the last few days rather than a literary exercise or any other pretension.