Day 17. Finding words.

The first night since many that I don´t sleep under the stars. I am in a hostel in Portbou, a room of my own. I went outside on my small balcony to look at the sky. I was cold. You get used to the comfort of a warm room quickly. I tried to find Orion, the Great Hunter but he was out of sight. I couldn´t see the moon either. I didn´t recognise any of the star signs in sight - there is still so much to learn. But when I looked up I saw a shooting star. The first time on my journey and it isn´t that I spend little time looking at the sky. 

I made a wish.

There is a tv in my room. I went through all the channels and it was mainly nonsense. But there was a nice item on TV5Monde Europe about two Syrian musicians, playing metal, who had fled Syria. About their music and how it was hard to make people understand their music genre at all but even more in a country where there is a war situation, where the dark side of it doesn´t go well with everyday life. They fled to Turkey in the back of van filled with people with hardly any space to breath, with only a few holes to let fresh air come in and afterwards they managed to get a place on a boat to Greece, almost being caught by the Turkish coastguards. From there they travelled to the Netherlands and the item stopped there. I would have liked to hear more about how they were managing in my home country. If they were still making music.

I tried to clean my hands but I´ve been living outside for too long. I ate grilled squid and salad and drank a draft beer. I checked out all the places in town and chose the noisiest one, with all the locals engaged in passionate conversations.

But first thing I did after I showered was visiting the Walter Benjamin memorial. It was just after sunset. It took my breath away. I´ve never seen a more impressive, beautiful, simple monument to pay tribute to somebody, connecting the traces of past pain, memory and exile, with the possibility of a renewed future.

It is situated on the edge of town, on a terrass overlooking the sea. There is the sky and the waves and a big olive tree There is a metal portal, a simple triangular shape and when you enter it you see the long metal stairs going down into the waves. The passage stairs. There is a glass wall almost at the end and already when you enter the portal you see yourself reflected down there. You walk down, towards yourself, towards the waves, 65 steps more or less until you reach the glass wall where the steps continue but where you can´t go any further and there it reads: 

"Schwerer ist es, das Gedächtnis des Namenlosen zu ehren als das der Beruhmten. Dem Gedächtnis der Namenlosen ist die historische Kunstruktion geweiht.¨

"It is more difficult to honour the memory of the anonymous than that of the renowned. Historical construction is devoted to the memory of the anonymous."

Walter Benjamin, G.S.I., 1241

You spend some time down there. You read the text in all the languages, in Catalan, in Spanish, in French, in English, but most of all in German, in his own language. Then you turn around, to walk back. And you look up and all you see is the sky at the end of the stairs. And that is where you walk to. 

You didn´t take photos. Why would you if the memory of what you saw will be with you forever. Why would you if you can take the time to find the proper words.