I had planned to spend two nights in Salamanca as a mini-break, it is roughly halfway on the camino and is a good place to do that. So, today I planned to be nothing more than a tourist, and ended up walking 12 km around the city. I had an excellent cooked breakfast in the hotel then went back up to my room to repack my mochilla, I planned to post some things home in order to lighten my pack, so I had to think carefully about what I could do without. One of my tasks today would be to find the post office and find out what time it opened in the morning.
Although it was Sunday, all the cafés, bars and restaurants were open and all the shops selling stuff tourists might like. I noted that most of it was the same kind of tourist tat that is sold in touristic shops all over Scotland, just without the tartan.
One of the touristic things I did was to do the tour of Salamanca Cathedral, (special peregrino discount on the entry price). It was an interesting tour and the building is certainly beautiful and awe inspiring in the way that cathedrals are. However, I was left with the feeling that it was very much like the Roman arch at Cáparra, both are monuments to empires that are dead or dying, empires whose time has come and gone. The monuments and mighty works of Rome are reduced to rubble and point to the past glories of that empire, glories that, for the most part, have to be imagined. In the same way, cathedrals are the monuments and mighty works of Christendom, now reduced to the status of tourist attractions that point to past glories when the Church, in partnership with the State, shaped and ruled society, and one day they too will turn to rubble. The influence of the religious ideology that built them has already passed away, though it may be argued that there is something new emerging out of the rubble of Christendom.
We spend so much of our lives chasing things that will turn to dust and be forgotten, it's not earthly treasures that last. I wandered around the city for a while, looking at the grand buildings and reflecting on the way that all things pass and how we measure greatness. Somehow the city's majestic buildings had lost their grandeur and so I went back to the hotel for a while, then went out for a coffee in the Plaza Mayor, I saw a group of classical music students busking, they were playing Gabriel's Oboe, from Morricone's score for The Mission, it seemed to fit the moment.
I went back to the hotel and went to bed, completely unaware that the next day was the day when everything would change.Läs mer
Resenär DANKE für öii Blogs, die si eifach SUPER!!! Ganz liebi Grüess, Marianne
Resenär jöö, merci viumau frs feedback! immer widr gärn. liebi grüessli
Resenär Isch mega interessant di reisebrichte zläse u di mega schöne fotos azluege. Häbets witterhin guet u gniessets ganz liebi grüess Rita