Coincidence in Santiago de Compostela

Cesar phoned me on Saturday afternoon having looked at a wonderful house in a beautiful situation. He has a typical 'Cesar' story to tell me today by email. He has so far not been won over by the people of Galicia - and does not appear to be winning them over either!  He had gone into the village post office to buy a stamp to send a card to us, but apparently the old woman there claimed she didn't sell any stamps for England. Cesar says he 'tried to explain to her that as a post office, she should have had stamps for the rest of Europe' - at which point, the woman shouted at him quite a lot in Gallego - the language of the area - and which he did not understand word for word, but definitely got the gist. So he left and went into the bar next door for a drink.  Whereupon, the same old woman came in from a door connecting the two buildings... he says he ran away immediately.

Later on, he went to Santiago de Compostela - which is the 'capital' of Galicia and is the destination point of the famous Pilgrimage route - the Camino de Santiago. He had decided to spend Sunday there and soak up some atmosphere as it's always busy, always alive and he has become a bit fed up of what he has politely referred to as the dullness of the Galician people he has met so far.

He phoned me very late - sorry very early - on Sunday morning. Not drunk but very happy as he'd just found his cousin Nacho busking outside the Cathedral! Nacho plays flutes and gaitas, the Galician bagpipes and has travelled all over, including several spells in Edinburgh during festival time, playing on the streets - but this has to be a pretty cool coincidence!  Actually, turns out he is living there at the moment with his Irish girlfriend, but FR didn't know that and hadn't been looking for him - he said he just saw him in front of the cathedral and managed to go and sit next to him before Nacho noticed he was there! I expect Nacho would have been even more surprised to see FR than the other way around.

This is a photo they sent through to me this morning - FR on the left - I have no idea why they are by the sea - Santiago isn't!

Nacho has a myspace page with some of his music -  in some of the pictures he's the one with his hair really short - much nicer when it's long and curly. He's an absolutely charming, talented young man and I am so happy FR found him as he did.