Tussen 28/10 en 5/11 tourden we wat rond in het noorden van Frankrijk met als doel onze franse vrienden Alizé en Nicolas bezoeken in hun gezellig cafeetje in Vert. . Huis en tuinen van Monet waren hierbij het hoogtepunt. 

Mmm, it feels like my dream is coming to an end. If I wouldn't have to pay 300 euro each month to the Belgian state I could have probably made it but now the extra money that I make above the cost of living just goes away to our good health care and pension system. I should have made actually double of what I made last month to be able to live ok from this. And I'm pretty sure that with a little bit more of experience and self confidence i could have made it but well it is what it is...Today was an total off day. Finally no rain anymore but it was the national holiday of Germany, which i didn't know of course, so Ratingen looked like this. 

Dülmen was a pleasure to play. The morning is almost always my best moment but anyway. There were not so many people but there was interest and a little bit of money.

Bad luck, in Melle there was a festival with 5 stages and when I was there almost no people. Such a pity... ! I couldn't play of course, too much music everywhere. Next they in Munster I started playing at the riverside. It was working but then some guys put really loud music. A bit later had a terrible headache fornthe rest of the day and the weekend was over ☹️

Osnabrück was looking very good. Played 1 set, and people were happy, me too. Then the cops came and it was over and out. Bye bye Osnabrück... No amplification of my guitar allowed. Long live the bagpipes, saxophones and violins ☹️ So I start to think that making beautiful music in the world is not possible. Now in a little town Melle, let's hope that it's better over here 🤗

My income was so bad in Münster that I had to go. I think that it has to do with the large amount of beggars around there and maybe the students also have no money. So I decided to go to a little town. Warendorf, it was very windy and almost no people but I made more in 1 hour than a whole day in Münster. Too bad there's only 1 street to play in... The other they are working so impossible to sit there. So I moved on...

Even though te money isn't very good in Münster it's a place with places to play when it rains. So back in Münster and maybe it will get a bit better moneywise. Let's hope 🙄

So I haven't posted for a while even that some good and bad things happened. It's a bit difficult to keep an online diary. So a few days it wasn't going well. I started doubting a bit too much... Then my girlfriend came over and we had some really good moments. But after dropping her in Essen (by train) because our van is not allowed there. I came back to Dorsten and the sun came trough. I started to play and first song nothing... Then a group of noisy youngster with a migration background appeared. And I was already thinking, bad me, oh no it's not going to work here. One of the guys stopped and said : that's really beautiful music and then all of them gave something, made my day 🙂 

So I was back in Hilden. Beautiful little town, but one thing I did not see coming was that they had their annual festival. This if of course fun, but for me it's not so good. If there are everywhere concerts for free why would people pay attention to a little street musician. I played an hour and actually it was more or less ok. An old couple thanked me in such a beautiful way that I was happy that i played. The next day I gave it another try not knowing where to go on a Sunday in Germany. Some cities are dead others are full with people sitting outside but which ones to go to is still a mystery to me. But the brass bands where so loud this time that there was no place for me to play. So I decided to just enjoy the festival.

So I played in Solingen, the town that made the news everywhere with the knife attack of the lunatic Syrian guy. I didn't find the town very attractive to be honest. The centre was more or less dead. There was a market going on so I decided to play there. Not so many people around either, but the people that were there were appreciating the music, well most of them, because one of the woman from the market came to ask me to go away and to sit at the other side of the street at the shopping centre. When I went to the toilet in the shopping centre I realised why the real centre was dead everybody was here. So I played one more hour at the entrance of the shopping centre. I was sitting against a huge concrete wall with nothing in or on it. When the security guards from the shopping centre came to tell me I could not sit against their gigantic empty wall I decided that I had enough of Solingen. Probably a mistake because many people were really ok, just not the people in charge. But i went back to Hilden because I thought it would be nicer there.