We're moving right along! Since the weekend in Antwerp, I had a lovely four days in Berlin where I did not busk, but did get to know this amazing city, with all its street art, speakeasies, fusbier, and vegan cafes. This morning I boarded an orange and blue Flixbus, a bit shakily due to the previous two nights' speakeasies and fusbier, and woke up a few hours later in Prague. Seeing signs in Czech made me all warm and fuzzy (or maybe that was the Dramamine); I was coming back to one of my homes. I was excited to "speak" Czech again, even if it just meant talking about potatoes.
Now that I'm in the third country since I left the UK, I'm really feeling like I'm on tour. I forget which language to speak. I'd be lying if I said I liked setting up in new places every week; I waste so much time wandering around looking for a spot. Tonight I finally found something and was nearly set up when I was told to move on. Nooo!
But along with the frustration of learning the ropes in a new city is the excitement of being seen for the first time; of playing for all new people, surrounded by different scenery. And so once I got going, tonight was really nice. Being a busker, I do most transactions in cash, usually coins, and I don't like straying from this. When I pay with my card or withdraw currency, it means I haven't been busking enough, and I'd prefer if my savings stayed put. I have been using my euros earned in Antwerp, and it was a nice feeling having a surplus to change into koruna upon my arrival in Prague. Hopefully I'll continue to earn more than I'm spending, and pay for the rest of my Europe trip on the go.
I did have some trouble with police tonight, though. In my first spot, a police car drove up and stopped near me. I kept playing and glanced in the car, where one seemed to be doing something on his lap. The only answer I could think of was that he was writing me my first busking citation. Guess that's my busker initiation done! Why else weren't they coming to talk already? It maaaaay have been because they were letting me finish my song (Twin Peaks, Laura's Theme), which is super nice, but who knows. When they finally exited the car, it was just to nicely tell me that it was forbidden to play there, but that I could play on the street around the corner until 22:30. It was annoying to pack up, but it was fine. So I set up around the corner, and after another hour a different cop came by, and asked me, "What's this?" What does it look like? "It's my puppet." He said that that street was forbidden for music, and that I had to stop at 21:30 anyway. Come on, cops, get your story straight!
I had one suitor tonight, who asked what time I was finishing. I told him, thinking he wanted to take over at my spot. But instead he invited me to have a coffee with him, citing his reasoning as, "I love you. I love girls who do hobbies." I'm definitely his girl, then! (I'm currently at my hostel writing a blog post, not romantically strolling across the Charles Bridge with him, in case you were wondering.)
One British teenage boy saw my sign and said,
"Sophie's Smokin' Squeezebox...I wonder what she's smoking!" Hey-oh! So his
friend said, "Yeah...WEED!" Good one. And the girl in the group
sarcastically said, "Oh you're SO funny." Youth!
The nicest part of the evening for me was the two little girls who watched me play for a while. They were there when the second cop shut me down, and they lingered while I packed up. We confirmed that they only mluvím Český and I only mluvím Anglický, so they couldn't engage me in adorable conversation. But we had a nice interaction anyway: I handed them Sylvie while I put some stuff away, then began picking up coins to put in my bag, and conjured up my basic Czech numbers I learned this summer to count: jedna...dva...tri...then let the girls take over, which they did enthusiastically. Every once and I while I yelled "Sto!" (100) but it was not #sto. They ended up picking up all my money for me, which was a big help!
Hopefully the Indian summer will continue, and I'll have a few gorgeous days to enjoy my beloved Vltava River, practice my Czech, and earn some travel money.
Dobrou noc!
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