10 cents every day

I put my pink "gipsy" bike a bit away with the cold weather, and I go by metro to work every day. I dont like it too much because people are bored, the lights should be good enough to illuminate a whole football field so that your eyes are burning and with these burning eyes you try to search something interesting. You only find shoes, bags, signs, and faces to explore so that you can entertain yourself a bit, and then suddenly you get a schock! You slightly elevate two milimeters from your seat because someone in the middle of the metro car starts to sing. But SING "oh when tha saiiints! oh when the saiiiiints! ohhh when the saints go maarching iiiin tarattta ta ta ra ta tata ..." Fully equipped with a microphone with background music.  (other favourite is "Ai se eu te pego aiiiiiii ..." but imagine femalevoicce and three times slower rhytm as the original one) 

But sometimes you hear the wonderful sound of the oboe or accordion "la cumparsita"  and you get in a trance. I noticed that these "musicians" are always playing the same songs, maybe dont know more, but they really put a smile on my face and help to survive the retina-killing conditions. Ok, except when you are with a terrible hedache or didnt sleep well, the last thing you wish - even to your enemy - would be to listen to the accordion ..... 

These people are inmigrants, they come from Romania, Serbia I guess, and they are earning money this way. Usually tourists give them some cents, locals are a bit fed up with these metro-car concerts and think as I do: if I gave them every day a coin I would spend a lot in a month for that, I can not afford it. 

Somedays ago, when I had to go to the other point of the town and had nothing with me - neither books, nor music - nothing to be entertained with I was really missing them. Then I felt a bit ashamed. I expect them to play but rarely give 5 or 10 cents .... 10 cents a day in a month would sum up to ... 3 euros! So yesterday I gave my first 10 cents.