For three years of training they're not allowed to go home, drive or use public transportation. The term “jack of all trades” came from them.
If you meet these guys in Mongolia or the Andes, don't mistake them for homeless steampunks. They're likely German woodworkers, tailors and engineers travelling and training to become official masters in their guilds.
The medieval journeyman pilgrimage is fairly simple: walk around the world for three years with only a light bundle. Knock on random doors, and see if strangers will put you up and feed you in exchange for fixing their roofs, making furniture and tailoring their clothes.
Via: vm2000.net
Before leaving town, journeymen must pass an exam and finish an apprenticeship. They also must be unmarried, childless, and debt-free.
Journeymen built most of Europe's great cathedrals. The practice fell out of favor in the industrial age, but craftsmen still wandered up til the 1920s. Then the Nazis banned it, and the Berlin Wall made the travelling nearly impossible, but after the 80s, it slowly began to return.
Via: fremderfreiheitsschacht.de
Nowadays, women can join journeyman brotherhoods too. Around ten percent of wandering craftsmen are now women. Feminist movements (and liberal movements in the late '80s in general) were integral to the tradition's revival.
Before leaving town, most journeymen get DIY ear piercings with hammers and nails. Traditionally, journeymen wear a gold earrings and bracelets – should they die abroad, the gravediggers took these jewelry as payment for a proper burial.
Sendoffs are emotional. In their three journeyman years, they must not come within a 50km radius of home.
Via: fudder.de
