Berlin und "Brazil"

Germany, oddly enough, is the country in which I have busked in the second-most locations, after the US: I hit three cities in the Spring, and two more in the Fall!  This post is about boring, disappointing busking on Halloween in Berlin, and nice busking in addition to a gig and puppet inspiration in Lübeck.  So here we go!

BERLIN: 31 October 2012
My stay in Berlin overlapped with Halloween.  Since America rules the world, I assumed the celebrations would match those expected in the US: kids with parents, packs of drunk people, etc.  I would raid my Couch Surfing host's closet and put together a costume, or just play up the piano dress.  I would surely earn a fortune.

If Halloween was a big deal, it was well hidden.  I brought my kit with me all day, mainly because it was really nice out, and planned to play for tourists before finding a good spot to set up for the evening.  In reality, there is not much to report.

I headed straight for the Brandenburg Gate, a tourist-ridden area at which Pockets had set up recently.  There is an island between two roads leading up to the gate that is filled with "buskers," people in stupid store-bought costumes accepting tips.  A significant amount of this space was taken up by demonstrators as well, so spots were few.  I asked a bear if you need a permit, and he said yes, definitely.  I considered setting up anyway, but there was an exceptional number of police officers around.

I walked down the Under der Linden boulevard and saw the potential of playing near the queue for Madame Tussaud's.  I found a good spot and set up.  Right as I was ready to play, a man came out of the building behind me and said I couldn't play there.  Flashed a vague badge in case I questioned his authority.  Fine, but he could have told me sooner, since he could clearly see me set up through the big window!  I moved a block away and set up, fitting in a few run-throughs of Flaca's set.

This was okay, I made a few tips but nothing much.  Some old ladies loved it, and a few families with children stopped.  One teenage boy actually held money above the box, then said, "Nope" and kept walking.  I made sure to yell after him and make him reconsider his treatment of buskers.

I packed up because I remembered I had to make it to the US embassy to vote before it closed.  After that fiasco (they not only wouldn't let me use the printer and scanner, but the German security guard physically escorted me out) I didn't put in a real session.  I planned to, being Halloween and all, but the stars weren't aligned to find a good spot.

I did set up briefly in front of the cathedral at dusk.  This was a good spot: tourists, on a busy street, people waiting for buses.  I got a bit of attention, and, more importantly, instigated a serious make-out session with my romantic accordion music.  But then another busker set up on the other end of the Dom courtyard with an electric guitar and amp and commenced the loudest set I have ever heard.  There was no possible way of continuing.

I kept walking, and soon crossed a cute bridge going over the canal.  It was full-on sunset and quite pleasant out, so I decided to try my luck a third time.  There were stalls on each side of the bridge selling furry hats and tacky WWII plastic memorabilia, so I seemed in good company.  Flaca looked nice with the lights on, but this still wasn't great.  The sidewalk proved to be too narrow to effectively draw spectators, and the ones who did stop stood in the bike lane, which is no good.  A police car stopped across the street, and I had the idea to turn off Flaca's lights and keep a low profile.  Sure enough, the vendors also threw sheets over their wares and looked away, whistling (or the equivalent).  I decided to just pack up then anyway.

Now that the sun was down, it was time to get into Halloween mode.  I stopped in Alexanderplatz, but there just weren't people out.  I figured a regular neighborhood with bars and restaurants would be better, so I went back to the neighborhood where I was staying.  It was early, but it was pretty desolate, and so I gave up.

I think Berlin is comparable to Boston and San Francisco in that way: good place to busk as long as you don't do it downtown.  I'm sure Berlin has neighborhoods comparable to Cambridge and the Castro, but I simply didn't know what they were.  Big cities require research, which I hadn't really done.  And so I dismissed my vision of awesome Halloween busking with lots of characters and stories and laughs. What I did do, though, from a dingy internet café that had visits from a few young Trick of Treaters, was VOTE!  Yay!

LÜBECK: 2 November 2012:
I wrapped up Berlin (by which I mean declared that this visit wouldn't really work out and that I must return under other circumstances) and headed to Lübeck, in the North of Germany.  This was a much-anticipated stop, since it was totally random.  I had originally planned to go to places I had heard of, Hamburg being my stop in the North, but the more I read about it the less appealing it seemed.  Each of the guidebooks I skimmed before departing had a small blurb on Lübeck, but each made it sound appealing, boasting its famous marzipan, cute churches, and renowned puppet museum  Sounds good, right?  Mostly, this trip taught me that I much prefer small towns, so why not go to random ones?

I arrived in Lübeck on a Friday afternoon, in the company of an awesome Italian-Swiss friend I made on the train, Valeria.  I love being a solo-traveler, but meeting this amazing young woman with similar interests and travel style was so wonderful at this stage of the trip.  I wasn't planning on busking that evening, rather saving it for a big Saturday, but it made sense to once I learned of the rainy weekend forecast.  There is a lot I could say about Lübeck, but I will split it into three performance-relevant blurbs: busking, the gig, and the puppet museum.

I. Busking
It seems that I don't have notes about this, so I will have to try to remember.  Valeria and I had been out shopping earlier (needed a coat before I got to Scandinavia), so we scoped out one of the main pedestrian streets.  Although I try to avoid shopping streets, this seemed like my best bet in a town of that size.  There was certainly foot traffic, and ample space to set up.  We had seen several buskers: one guy with curly hair playing both accordion and trumpet, an old man playing accordion, a few young male guitar players, a young woman playing the bagpipes (a tune I recognized from the streets of Edinburgh), and a guy producing huge bubbles in a larger square.  I've seen quite a few of these recently; it must be a new busking fad.  The sad thing is, he probably makes a ton more money than musicians, and he can properly bundle up and doesn't have to work a long day.  Ah, well.  Once it got dark I retrieved my gear from our host's house and came back out.

I set up outside the town hall, which had some musicians coming and going from it (fancy ones with big cases and elegant apparel).  The street was pretty busy, and I had nice crowds.  Some children did the typical thing of coming around and looking at the back of the box, seeking an explanation for Flaca's movement.  One little boy did his duty of touching everything and trying to talk to me, ignoring my "Ich spreche kein Deutsch"es.  One young man recognized me from my ad on CouchSurfing, and claims he sent me a message inviting me to stay.  I had missed that one!  That has happened before, and I'm always glad when people come say hi. 

An older guy with a guitar walked by, looked at me, then took a seat on a nearby bench with a bottle in a brown paper bag (very cliché, I know).  I thought it must be his spot, but he didn't say anything.  A couple times he picked up the guitar and started following along, but luckily he wasn't persistent enough that it reeeally annoyed me.  It was a good spot and, as usual, I was surprised I was allowed to stay.

Valeria listened for a bit, then she went out in search of food.  A local young man struck up conversation with her, and showed her around a little bit.  The two came back together as I was packing up, and the guy clearly wanted to hang out with us.  We exaggerated the exclusivity of our plans, and Valeria graciously accepted his email address.  It was a pretty tame set, but it was nice to have my coin bag jingling again after being dormant in Berlin! 

Then it was time for...

II: The Gig
My CouchSurfing host, Cherie (who generously took in Valeria as well), arranged a gig for me at her friend's bar, Cafe Brazil: http://cafe-brazil.net/ .  I had expressed concern about the wet forecast, so she mentioned her friend's bar, as people often do, as a place to play.  But she went as far as really organizing me to play!  I did not like that idea at first.  I didn't want the attention, and I preferred to stay on the street where I would surely make better tips.  But I thought more about it.  I would go on at nine, after I would quit busking anyway.  She said it was a cool place, really informal, and was confident that I wouldn't embarrass myself.  Furthermore, her friend offered Valeria and I free food and drinks.  Okay, then!  Either way, it would be a story.  So I finally consented.

Cafe Brazil is awesome.  It's a collective, so the staff are all volunteers.  It's popular among, like, punks, and there's a funky mix of used furniture and art and stuff.  It was a really cool atmosphere, reddish lights, a ton of smoke in the air.  It's a little hard to find, so its customers really mean it.  We got there early to eat.  It turns out every night, or Friday night or something, they just cook a bunch of vegetarian (vegan?) food and people can pay what they want for it.  Tonight was pasta with tomatoes and tofu, and salad.  Mmm!  And free beer for us.  So we sat around and ate and drank and talked to Cherie more.  The place filled up nicely, partly because there is a venue in the same building that has big shows, and there was a band that night.  There were some normal looking folks who clearly eat dinner here often, and also a lot of fashionable punks just drinking, even playing cards.  Leonard kept suggesting I wait for more people, and I finally went on stage at like 10:15.  Stage was just an elevated corner next to the TV, since there were already a bunch of tables and sofas on the real stage.  And I played.

It was actually quite nice, people were aware of me but not focusing on me, which is what I wanted.   It was cool to get applause after songs, and to feel really mysterious responding to the occasional comment with "Ich spreche kein Deutsch."  It was mostly nice to play all my songs again, since I'm only doing a few with Flaca.  As predicted, people liked "The Final Countdown" and "What is Love?", and the retired Lady Gaga medley went over quite well.  I took a couple breaks, to look really cool and get another beer.  Leonard had to step out and he missed the whole set, unfortunately.  Cherie and I secretly discussed the possibility of passing a hat, to which she had donated in the past when there were performers, but I certainly didn't want to start it.  So Valeria donated her hat, and Cherie asked one of the hooligans working the bar to pass it around.  It came back with a little money in it, like ten Euros probably.  At least it's something!  It wasn't awesome enough or remotely a disaster to make it a really good story, but it was certainly a memorable experience.   I really ought to have sought more indoor bar gigs on the road, since I really had nothing to lose, being a foreign traveler.  Next time!

III. The Puppet Museum
Puppetry was a major theme of my Fall trip, since Flaca now has an active role in my act and I am thinking about what else to do with her.  I visited several puppet museums in the Czech Republic, and have a general greater understanding of basic marionette stuff.  The museum in Lübeck, however, was really awesome.  While the Czech republic ones had very similar marionettes, including the mass-produced ones for sale in the gift shops, this museum had over 20,000 marionettes from all over the world and various eras.  We saw human and animal puppets from Asia and Africa, Chinese shadow puppets, artifacts from strange puppet traditions such as the "walking puppet theatre" (puppeteer has her arms in puppets in a theatre that is mounted to her with a cloth over her head, so all spectators see is a theater and legs), tiny marionette theatres, etc. etc.  The museum was started by one man, who traveled the world going to antique shops and making these amazing finds.  I highly recommend this museum.  I have some general ideas of what I want to do with the puppetry side of my act, but it will take a lot of thinking and sketching and engineering (or just asking Tom) to make it work.  I'm very excited, though.

I took Saturday off of busking, despite the lack of the forecast rain, then Valeria and I hopped on a train to Copenhagen!