We are sitting inside now. We were sitting outside, using the internet from school, because school is closed for the evening. I think the reason that the cashier came out and asked us to either buy something or leave was that my new friend had started to play the harmonica.
He wasn't exactly a new friend, just a man on the street. I was reading my email when I heard a voice say "Hello, girls." (How did he know that we spoke English? Do I really look that much like a foreigner? It might have had something to do with my roommate Alaina skyping in English with her parents.) I looked up and saw a man in a flannel shirt carrying a sleeping bag, a knapsack, and a violin in a plaid case on his shoulders. "Please visit the site lazybeggars," he said. "It's my friends' site."
I didn't know what to say. So I said "okay" and hoped that he would go away and not wait to see if I visited the website. Because I wasn't going to visit the website.
But he stood there for a few more seconds. He was the picture perfect beggar. "Can I take a picture of you?" I asked, since my camera was sitting in my lap.
"Only if you pay me. I am not a tourist attraction."
I noticed that he was gripping his left hand with his right and that there was an inch long gash on his left thumb. "What happened to your hand?" I asked.
"Last night I was drunk. Now, I am not a man who is always drunk. I am only drunk maybe two or three times a year. But last night my friends and I had a party. And I fell and hurt my hand and it's really hurting me now."
I had a hard time believing a man holding a large bottle of beer in his hand when he said that he rarely gets drunk. I said "Well, be careful," and pointed to the twenty ounces he had left.
"This?" he chuckled. "Don't worry. I am just… waking up. But please, visit the site lazybeggers. And if I see you again, we will talk. We are not all the same." He walked away, and I went back to reading my emails. I did not visit his recommended site, but something told me that he would be back to ask.
Sure enough, in just a few minutes, he was back, and he continued to pester me to visit the site. Please don't be porn, I thought as I opened a new window and typed "lazybeggars.com" With my permission, he sat down in the cafe chair next to me. I noticed his crooked, yellowed teeth and tried not to breathe in too much of his beer breath.
When the site came up, it was not what I had expected. It was some professional looking site with various services and offers. It was not what he expected, either. "I think you spelled it wrong" he said. So I spelled it more phonetically. 'lazybeggers' didn't get me anything at all. "No, spell it like that," he said, and he touched my screen. Have I told you how I feel about people touching my screen? After a few more tries and a few more fingerprints, we gave up on finding the site.
I asked him where he was from. "My nationality is a traveler." I was about to ask him where has born when he said, "I was born in Croatia, but I would be offended if you called me a Croatian. You know there was a war there– I'm sure you've heard something about it– and I was never able to complete my education. So now I am a man without a degree, without an education. But that is really not the reason why I do not like Croatia. I am not blaming them for everything. A Croatian just isn't who I am. I don't have the same mind as they do. They are very nationalistic. When I go to Croatia, I have to act like a Croatian, but if I leave Croatia, I'm told that I'm not a Croatian anymore."
"You don't fit in there?"
"No, I don't fit at all. So I travel. I have been everywhere in Europe. But only in Europe. I want to go everywhere in the world, though. I think I am not going to die soon, so I will be able to go many places. I want to go everywhere."
Me too, I thought. We have that in common. But unlike him, I wasn't fluent in Croatian, English, Spanish, and whatever other languages he's picked up along the way. "How did you learn English?" I asked.
"They teach it in school in Croatia. They did give me that. My Spanish is not quite as good, but I can say everything I want to say." Just then a friend of his walked by, giving him a chance to prove his Spanish skills. As they talked, the beggar sitting in the chair next to me reached into his pocket and brought out a little harmonica in its case. He showed it to his friend, but his friend said that he would come back later.
As his friend walked on, the beggar explained the harmonica to me. "This is not my instrument. That guitar is my instrument." He pointed towards the pile of possessions he had left leaning against the wall. "But some people stole my guitar once, so my friend gave me this harmonica. That's why I told him to come back and get his harmonica, since it is his. I can't play it very well, but I can play."
He took the harmonica in his hand and set the case on the table between my laptop and his flask of beer. He played a few notes, frowned, switched the harmonica upside down, played a swoop of notes that hummed in the opposite direction of his expectations, laughed at himself, switched it right side up again, found his starting pitch, and was about to begin the song. He paused for a moment. "Is it okay with you?" he made sure. I nodded.
He started to play, and I recognized the tune. "Silent Night!" I said aloud. Harmonica might not have been his first instrument, but it sounded good. But I didn't get to enjoy it for long, because that's when the cashier came and told us that we had to be consuming something from the cafe to be sitting there.
As we stood up to leave, he to his wandering on the dusky streets, and we to buy a fanta and fries and sit inside, I asked him where his favorite places in Europe were. "If I get the chance to travel, where should I go?"
"My favorites," he replied without hesitating, "are Rotterdam and Rome. Besides Sevilla."
Sorry about the lack of pictures since I've been in Sevilla. Tabblo, the site that hosts my photoblog, has been has been fluking up my posts lately, so I haven't been able to publish anything. But the people there are working on it. For now, I've put some pictures on flickr. I've captioned the photos, so if you view them as a slide show, click on 'options' to turn the descriptions on.
