The advantage to being locked into places of worship for the night is that they provide a place to sleep that is both peaceful & dry. The disadvantage to the same is that European churches are not equipped with emergency exits — meaning that one must either quietly hide and wait for the wardens of the same to let one out the following morning, or one must find another means of egress. I was up pretty early on this day, and didn’t want to wait to be let out. Fortunately, a single door off to the side of the main altar was accessible from the inside, and I quietly made my way out of the Elzach church without incident an hour or so before dawn … 🙂

I still had to find The Way itself before I could flow onward (I had lost the Camino the day before, and had simply walked towards Elzach because I knew it lay in the generally correct direction), and soon after exiting the church I came across a nearby community center whose foyer was both open and warm (the janitorial staff was inside cleaning the same at the time). I hung out for while therein to warm my cold & creaky bones and eventually asked one of the custodians about where the Camino de Santiago (or the Jakobsweg, in German) passed through town. He was adamant in answering that the Camino didn’t pass through town at all, so I headed out as dawn broke, thinking that I would simply walk in a southwesterly direction until finding it again.

Fascinatingly enough, no sooner had I walked 50 feet out the front door than I saw a Camino de Santiago marker at a nearby street corner. It turns out I didn’t need to loom for The Way at all that morning, as I was already strolling along the same the minute I set forth … 😀

“Adventure is only an inconvenience correctly comprehended. Inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly known.” ~ via G. K. Chesterton

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt