When the COVID-19 travel restrictions are gradually eased, thoughts are directed to travel, especially foreign travel. Here’s the expense list: travel insurance, air fare, car rental, road tolls, accommodations, entry fees for museums and art galleries; boat tours, eating out; groceries, etc…
Aha! Here’s the ‘etc.’, the expense item we tourists neglect: rewarding the street entertainers, buskers, jugglers, balladeers, acrobats, mimes and storytellers who brighten tourist gathering places. If we stay to watch them, be entertained by them, or photograph them, we have an obligation to reward them for their efforts by applause and by dropping some local currency in their direction.
Here’s a technological problem looming. Most tourists no longer use cash. Will buskers have to resort to replacing their hat or tin cup on the cobblestones with a card reader?
As you gaze at these photos taken during my travels in Europe, North Africa and Central America, consider how a generous contribution could affect those performers’
livelihoods. Gratias! Dankeschön! Grazie! Merci beaucoup! Obrigad’!
