I’m Off Then: My Journey Along the Camino de Santiago (2006), by Hape Kerkeling
Hape Kerkeling, Germany’s most versatile comedian and television host, walked to the tomb of the Apostle Saint James in the Santiago Cathedral in the city of Santiago de Compostela and experienced the purifying power of pilgrimage.
With his humour and sensitivity for unusual details, Kerkeling opens himself up to these regions and makes friends with both locals and modern pilgrims, along with their rituals and quirks.
Solitude and silence, exhaustion and uncertainty, but also selflessness, friendship and countless rewards… as well as a particular and surprising closeness to God.
“This journey is hard and wonderful. It is a challenge and an invitation. It leaves you spent and empty. And it remakes you. It takes away all your strength and gives it back to you threefold.”
Hape Kerkeling
On a cloudy June morning, Hape Kerkeling, a self-declared and thoroughly settled couch potato, finally overcomes the sloth within him and sets off from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Six weeks await him, alone with himself and his eleven-kilo red backpack, walking the legendary Camino Frances: across the snow-capped peaks of the Pyrenees, the Basque Country, Navarra, La Rioja and Castile and León, all the way to the tomb of the Apostle Saint James in Galicia, a destination for believers from every corner of the world for over a thousand years.
With his humour and sensitivity for unusual details, Kerkeling opens himself up to these unfamiliar regions and makes friends with both locals and modern pilgrims, along with their rituals and quirks. He experiences solitude and silence, exhaustion and uncertainty, but also selflessness, friendship and countless rewards… as well as a particular and surprising closeness to God.
An extraordinary book, full of humour, warmth and wisdom; an honest testimony to the search for God and for oneself, and to the priceless value of a journey made on foot.
