Beware of your past experiences

Humans learn from experience. We observe, remember, and adjust our behaviour for next time. Rather useful for survival.

Except when we draw sweeping conclusions from one small bowl of tabbouleh.

On the Camino de Santiago, I arrive one day in Estaing. A beautiful village, between a castle and a river, in the kind of France you really get to discover when you cross it on foot. You move at your own pace, carrying your house on your back. What a pleasure, that freedom.

I settle into one of the last donativo albergues I will come across on the Camino. The principle: everyone gives what they wish for their stay.

The place is very Christian. The man who welcomes us wears some kind of religious object around his neck, I could not tell you exactly what it was. After the meal, a prayer session is offered in a separate room.

But before feeding the spirit, I am mostly hoping to feed the rest of me.

Because walking thirty kilometres a day with a pack well over fifteen kilos works up quite an appetite. I am hungry pretty much all the time. Even someone like me, who does not eat much sugar, gets through at least one bar of chocolate a day outside of meals.

That evening, we are served tabbouleh.

A small tabbouleh.

I eat it while waiting for what comes next.

Nothing comes next.

For my hiker's stomach, it feels more like an appetiser than a dinner. I go to bed and sleep as best I can, with my stomach still empty.

The next morning, a good breakfast and some homemade jam put me right with the world again. I pack my things and get back on the road.

After half an hour of walking, I realise the ten euros meant for the albergue are still in my pocket.

A nice way of saying I forgot to give them.

About-turn. I walk back to pay, then set off again.

What a treat, starting your day with an hour of walking just to end up back exactly where you started.

A few weeks later, I arrive at another albergue, run by an elderly woman and her husband. They are very kind. She cooks for everyone, but I eat in a room separate from the couple.

She first brings me a small soup.

I finish it.

Then comes a large bowl of tabbouleh. Easily enough for three people.

But I have experience now.

I know the tabbouleh trick.

This time, I am not going to bed hungry while food sits right in front of me.

I finish the whole bowl.

The woman remarks that I have quite the appetite. I am rather pleased with myself. Finally, a meal that matches my hunger.

Then she comes back with the main course.

Enormous sausages.

And their side dish.

I realise then that my previous experience may not have given me all the keys I needed to read this dinner correctly.

But now that it is in front of me, I feel obliged to do the meal justice. I push through. Each bite gets a little harder than the last, but I manage to finish almost my entire plate.

By the end, my stomach is so full that sitting down on the sofa takes some genuine consideration.

It is only afterwards that another thought occurs to me.

That large bowl of tabbouleh, the one that could easily have fed three people...

There happened to be three of us.

I think the couple never got to taste their own tabbouleh.

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