[Gocamino] 2007 Pilgrims

[blaroli at aol.com]

Hello you all from  golden Vienna,
First, I'd like to wish you a very wonderful New Year,
After a particularly busy Christmas season I hoped to rest in Vienna not knowing that I'd be jumping from the pan into the fire. The Viennese have five or so days of  pre New Years parties that go on for 24 hours, and it seems that the thing to do in Europe is to go to Vienna for New Years.  The city was full to capacity with revelers who enjoyed the street stages and fairs and the dozens of live music groups all over the place paid for and organized by the government.  They call New Year's "Silvester" and it is a huge, huge, days long celebration all over the place despite the freezing cold.  On New Year's eve üroper there were bands and dancing areas all over the city, with maps and types of music (modern, rock, Latin, etc) provided by stands at every corner.  The city was swamped with booths offering freshly fried, baked potatoes, all sorts of sausages and  drinks of choice:  Gluwein, which is a delicious hot spiced wine,... something called Punsch (pronounced poooooonch) which is some kind of hot 80- proof orange juice and a hardy drink which is a combination of red bull and vodka.  Thousands, literally, of Austrian champagne (called "sekt") were given away, for free, by representatives of this or that.
I myself chose to receive the year at a wine tavern (Heuregin) on the Vienna Woods with a group of internationals, which was lovely. When we returned to the City about 2:00 am we went to the Graben (a wide, three blocks-long pedestrian shopping street which was illuminated by huge chandeliers all down the street) where people were  waltzing and waltzing away down the street to live music under softly  falling snow.  That was something to see!
You know, as Byron said when he was rescued and taken to convalesce in Venice:  "there are other lovelier and more beautiful places even in this life".

Back to the pilgrims:
There were 114,026 Compostela recipients pilgrims in 2007 (100,377 in 2006). 

Pilgrims with purely religious motives were 43,581; religious-cultural 60,944 and non-religious 9,501.

104,568 pilgrims came from Europe. The largest number of non-Spaniard pilgrims came from Germany, 13,837, followed by those from Italy, 10,257, those from France, 6,982, those from Portugal, 4,001  those from the United States 2,229  those from Canada 1,850, those from the UK 1,696: those from Austria, 1,686; from Holland 1,655; from Brasil, 1,395; from Belgium, 1,332: from Switzerland 1,136; from Ireland 1,090........ and the rest in verying numbers from more than 100 countries.

47,246 of the pilgrims were women and 66,780 were men.

Pilgrims under 15 years of age were 4,858; 16 to 35,  44,239: 36 to 65, 58,631 and 66 to 100  6,298  (4,843 in 2006).

If you would like to know about routes followed, starting places, means, occupations or the numbers for a particular country not listed above let me know and I'll post them.

Meanwhile,

Große Umarmung,

Rosina



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