there must be something about me and goats...

Ellen DeGeneres has a hysterical routine about marrying a goat...I can't remember which DVD it's on, Big G would know, but I was running it through my head the other day while I was working thru this plan. (and here it is...thanks to YouTube)





Anyway...last week I met a German woman at an alburgue in Barrios. I was telling her that I was going to have an extra couple of weeks on my hands and I wasn't quite sure where to go once my walk was over.

She suggested I come work on her friend's farm in Bavaria where she raises goats and makes about fifteen different kinds of specialty cheese from their milk.

Well, that sounded like something.

So it took a little finagling, but on Wednesday morning I'll be flying into Munich and then heading into the mountains to hang out and work on this farm for a little over ten days.

I'm pretty excited about getting my hands dirty and learning how to make goat cheese. I'm also looking forward to being in one place for awhile. There's a lot left to see here in Portugal, but I'm way over hotels and pensions and having to look for places to stay every night. I hope I can come back here at some point and tour it again, maybe in a car...

I am writing you today from Fatima. It's quite a place. The cathedral and the shrine devoted to the vision of Mary by three young shephards here in 1917 is extraordinary...




As are the sheer numbers of devotees. It's Sunday, so this bumps the numbers up I'm sure...but man, you should see the parking lot, it's filled with tour busses and RV's. People picnicking, grills are going. It's like a big, holy tailgate party.


And with that comes some moving, reverant sights, like the people walking on their knees, or crawling around the chapel built on the site where the first vision occurred. I didn't take any photos of this either for obvious reasons, but here is a picture of the plaza early in the morning before Mass.




There's also a massive pyre where people by the hundreds line up to offer candles.




Mass this morning was beautiful and I wandered the crowds, watching people, listening to the words I couldn't understand piped over loudspeakers, and loving the sounds of the choir as they sang in between.



Those moments make up for the bazillion shops selling plastic Fatimas and beads and trinkets galore. It's like Fisherman's Wharf. Cellphones going off during mass, people talking on cellphones in the Chapels...eegads...makes me crazy.

Anyway...have to get off the computer now. I will try to write to you when I can. Tomorrow I go to Lisbon where I am boarding a night train to Madrid and then to Munich from there. I could've flown from Lisbon, but it would've meant changing planes in Madrid anyway and so I'd rather take 2 flights instead of 4 (I have to come back to Lisbon to catch my flight home). Don't think about it too much...it makes sense to me. I like trains better...if it wasn't going to cost me and arm and leg I would've taken a train all the way to Munich...but there you go.

SO I don't know what my scene will be like in Germany. I know I am going to be in the town of Kempten in Allgau. And that's all I know right now.

So...I'll talk to ya soon! Oh, by the way, Big G? You are hysterical and I knew you were going to have a quote for me. But you know what scene I was thinking about? The one where she and Ryan O'Neal decided to pretty her up a little bit and they get that ribbon for her hair and the lady says something like, "Well it makes all the difference." Can't wait to watch that movie with you again!

Lots of love folks