![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottishlassOkay, this book this time has only been published in German so far and I think only Germans will be interested in it. I have read it in May, before the hype hit the press.
The author of the book is one of Germany's top comedians and he is liked by both young and old, het and gay (he himself is gay and is out of the closet for decades now). HaPe Kerkeling is seen as the funny guy who portrays all these weirdo characters that seem to be so typical for Germany and even though in interviews he comes across as quite an intellectual, I was more than surprised about his first foray into writing:
Ich bin dann mal weg (Take care, I'm off then) is a sometimes funny, sometimes pithy rendition of his pilgrimage on the St. James Way from France to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. 800 kilometres through the Spanish plains and wilderness and the beautiful yet troubled mountains of the Basque region.
I got interested in it as I had been to the same pilgramage about 12 years ago with some co-students as some kind of dare - so seeing that Ha Pe who is a self-proclaimed couch potatoe had done the same as I did (when I was still a bit more sporty) I was curious of how he had experience this pilgramage. As he is also non-religious but spiritual like me, I had to have the book.
I read it in one go and I laughed and smiled, I sometimes shook my head in wonder or nodded in agreement. The people he met, the things he experienced ... it all had a ring of truth, a sense of remembrance that touched me. It is a deeply spiritual book in a non-religious way. Of course, being on a pilgramage it has religious over-tones but Kerkeling finds a way to keep all the religious and especially the Roman-Catholic connotations at a minimum. He makes fun, he puts on trial but with a lightness and some sort of playfullness that entertains but also makes you think.
He describes all things human, and how he reacts to it. The 320 pages strong book, enriched with some nice photos, is an excellent and very detailed travel guide. Even though the book is more or less about God, religion, re-incarnation (a topic that the yellow press took up gratefully) and the central question of "who am I?" Kerkeling's thoughts in his daily vignettes are poignant and show the cheekiness of the author, here is an example from July 3rd : "Sometimes it is most reasonable to be simply unreasonable!"
If you read this book it will touch you on many levels, it will give you an inside on one of Germany's famous celebrities, it will touch your own spirituality and it will make you want to pick up a walking-staff and go all the 800 kilometres yourself, following the St. James Way.
The author of the book is one of Germany's top comedians and he is liked by both young and old, het and gay (he himself is gay and is out of the closet for decades now). HaPe Kerkeling is seen as the funny guy who portrays all these weirdo characters that seem to be so typical for Germany and even though in interviews he comes across as quite an intellectual, I was more than surprised about his first foray into writing:Ich bin dann mal weg (Take care, I'm off then) is a sometimes funny, sometimes pithy rendition of his pilgrimage on the St. James Way from France to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. 800 kilometres through the Spanish plains and wilderness and the beautiful yet troubled mountains of the Basque region.
I got interested in it as I had been to the same pilgramage about 12 years ago with some co-students as some kind of dare - so seeing that Ha Pe who is a self-proclaimed couch potatoe had done the same as I did (when I was still a bit more sporty) I was curious of how he had experience this pilgramage. As he is also non-religious but spiritual like me, I had to have the book.
I read it in one go and I laughed and smiled, I sometimes shook my head in wonder or nodded in agreement. The people he met, the things he experienced ... it all had a ring of truth, a sense of remembrance that touched me. It is a deeply spiritual book in a non-religious way. Of course, being on a pilgramage it has religious over-tones but Kerkeling finds a way to keep all the religious and especially the Roman-Catholic connotations at a minimum. He makes fun, he puts on trial but with a lightness and some sort of playfullness that entertains but also makes you think.
He describes all things human, and how he reacts to it. The 320 pages strong book, enriched with some nice photos, is an excellent and very detailed travel guide. Even though the book is more or less about God, religion, re-incarnation (a topic that the yellow press took up gratefully) and the central question of "who am I?" Kerkeling's thoughts in his daily vignettes are poignant and show the cheekiness of the author, here is an example from July 3rd : "Sometimes it is most reasonable to be simply unreasonable!"
If you read this book it will touch you on many levels, it will give you an inside on one of Germany's famous celebrities, it will touch your own spirituality and it will make you want to pick up a walking-staff and go all the 800 kilometres yourself, following the St. James Way.
