Angels at the wayside.

Maria Mediavilla is 75 and stamped passports. Almost daily, for seven years. Each pilgrim on the road to visit her, it is counted by line list. Boring is not it the job, because it is long since arrived there, where many still want to go - for themselves

 

It will go on tour. Like nearly every day in the past seven years. It is not far. You just need the door of her house to open up the stone steps down and the few steps to her old desk to go on the roadside stands. There, they break under the gnarled fig tree, which on hot days, some shade and rain a dry space.

And then she waits and listens in the morning. It waits for the people who daily walk past her house. At her fingers she begins to list: "France, Spain, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany," she makes a break? "You know what? people from all over the world for me."

In large parts of the road leading to its approximately 800 kilometers from the French border to Santiago de Compostela on the hill of the wild west of Europe. Shortly before Logroño, a city of 120,000 people in the northeast of Spain, sits Maria Mediavilla. It is a small woman with short, grauschwarzen hair, glasses and a warm eyes. Life has deep wrinkles in her face dug.

Even before the Pilgrims reached the Ebro River, which is brown and muddy snaking through the city, they run through the vineyards and the house of 75-year-olds over. Here grow the white and red grape of the famous Rioja, a number of olive trees. It is a serious, tough soil. On rainy days he collects into a centimeter-thick layer of mud under our feet. Only hard can the loamy soil back from the scrape shoes. Each step is already here for the challenge? while there are still 602 kilometers to the grave of St. Jacob.

Stamp pads, pen and guest book

Maria Mediavilla, the people with backpacks and walking sticks already see from afar, when they come down hill. Prior to their doorstep is the Camino a narrow paved road. Before her on the table a stamp, an inkpad, a pen, a paper and a guestbook. A plastic sheet to protect it against rain. Two heavy bricks shall ensure that the wind is not the film fortreißt.

But the important thing is not the book, it is the stamp. Maria Mediavilla sitting here almost every day, around the family temple in the Credencial, official passports of the pilgrims, to print. Everyone must have this card and carry on? mostly in the hostels? repeatedly stamped, so in Santiago de Compostela, the final deed of his pilgrimage to obtain.

GAP AND LOCKE

Benne Ochs

Oliver Lück is to tour Europe. The young bitch Hovawart Locke and his mobile home, he travels first through the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Spain - and then always follow your nose. With blogs ONLINE Lück reported regularly by people and their stories.

Media Señora Villa is a Stemplerin. It has the task from her mother over. She speaks a lot about her mother and how it all began at the time that a priest from the city into the house in the vineyards came and the mother asked for help. We wanted to capture how many pilgrims came to Logroño. Whenever she could, it should include people. Because up here, two kilometers from the city, everything was much clearer than at the bottom of the maze of streets. Since they do not read and write were counted them differently. She presented small stones in a bowl on the table? for each pilgrim a stone. At the end of the day was the daughter of the stones and listed a number

20 years Felisa Rodriguez Medel was sitting in front of their house and gave the people water, figs and a shady spot, and they stamped their passports. When her mother died, Mary inherited the stamp Mediavilla. He is a gift of a pilgrim from Madrid. "Felisa, Higos, Agua y Amor" is it? Felisa (the name of Mary's mother), figs, water and love. "All the things she has and what I do now proceed," says Maria Mediavilla, once on the farms of the area harvested grapes and olives and today on a small pension and donations from the pilgrims' lives.

30 years ago were barely a dozen people a year, the medieval pilgrimage to it. Meanwhile? Paulo Coelho, Shirley MacLaine and Hape Kerkeling Thanks? In some years more than 100,000 pilgrims on the march. And Maria Mediavilla introduces the book: In August it was 7569, in September 5143, October 2196, in November 1873. She makes lines on a slip. Each line represents a pilgrim. And every line looks the same. "So it's on the road," she says, "it makes no difference, it does not matter whether you are rich or poor, whether you're smart or stupid? Are all equal."

An open ear for every history

You yourself is the route to Galicia has not yet gone. It will also no longer, she says, "but the way I go every day anew, by the pilgrims and their stories." And everyone should rest with her and most berichten.Die stay only briefly, asking for a stamp and put a small donation to the scallops on the table. Other wordlessly go over, not even greet. Still others are an hour or longer with her, talk without ceasing, as if they would get paid.

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And some are on one of the benches in the shade to speak not a word and start to cry. "Often I cry with them," says Maria Mediavilla, "when they open but then, I hear their problems, from disease or the family to tell."

Many thanks for a brief greeting in the guestbook. "An angel on the way," writes a man from Kiel. "Just before the noise of the city is an oasis of peace", was the place for a woman from Munich. And a woman from Canada: "Thank you for the coffee." 22 books in 27 years as gifts since been abandoned.

Maria Mediavilla says that most of the "Camino" to take on, in search of something is? after a task, for recognition, for an explanation for something, perhaps about his own great truth, of happiness. It seems much of himself already to have found. It simply sits there and waits there every desire "a good way!" on the trip. And anyone who wants to express them with the utmost care of a stamp in the passport, as if it were the very first time is always reviewed their work, once again blow over it, so that the color is not blurred, and writes the date next to it.

Time is what you make from it

"That's my job," she says, the stamp is the connection between her and the pilgrims, between two worlds. Indeed, although these meetings are often only a few moments, of contrasting, they could hardly be: the pilgrims, always on, every day at another location, then the wife, at home in front of their house in the shadow of the fig tree, long since arrived, where many still out want: for himself

Whether it is not boring, every day in front of the house to sit, had a young woman from Austria asked once. "Oh, but, sometimes," Maria Mediavilla had responded, but every day was so different, "because every day I meet other people, other stories". And when times three hours no one comes, the girl had drilled more. "Then it's up to me, from my time to do something, to, to cook or just enjoy the silence." Time is what you make from it? simple and beautiful, this story does not end. A glance at the clock on the wrist of the old woman says that this has stopped.