LAST BUSK IN KRAKOW

One final busk on Florianska Ulca before I leave this lovely city for good... there are a few people I want to say goodbye to.

Anita and Claudia, my waitress friends, are out armed with their menu's; they are such lovely girls and I'll miss playing for them every night. I get their email addresses and tell them I'll try to visit them next year - though we all hope they will have moved onto bigger and better things than this, a dreaded job they dislike but do rather well at.

Andre, the gentle Polish giant who requested Janis Joplin a few days back rocks up and introduces me to his girlfriend. The two of them are carrying a box with a sign attached asking passers by for money - I don't ask why and they don't ask me for anything either, we just say hello and goodbye and smile before they move on again. There's a lot of this on the streets actually, and although some of it is just a scam, so much of it is real.. old men hold out bunches of wilting flowers for sale with shaking hands... scarved women bend over their begging bowls, foreheads to the concrete... and then on the other side of the coin, friends of Andre's wait outside the supermarket and ask people for spare change for their Friday night out on the piss...

It gets cold and I stop busking at around 7.30 p.m. to meet Jannah and Scooter for a final Greenway samosa, bidding farewell to this street I've loved to play on. There's a barbeque at my hostel that night, and I play guitar again there, despite the piles of meat that sit grossing me out on the table. Good salads though - and who says 'you can't win friends with salad'?!

My train to Prague breaks down the next day and is delayed for two hours, and I write this latest offering in the silent space between countries, in the zone where nothing can be done but wait and reflect on what has passed and what may come... I meet such good people on the train though, Rahul and Rishi from England (we talk about India and good vegetarian restaurants), Paul from Sydney as well as an American / Polish-Canadian couple that teach English all over the world and thus, I don't mind the delay. It does mean that I get to Prague at midnight however, which is kind of not good; just another factor one just has to deal with in these crazy travelling times...

Let me see what the streets of this new city shall bring...