How I travelled in Europe and made money by busking

When I was only 18 years old I took a train from The Netherlands to Paris, France. I decided to travel through Europe and I took my guitar with me. I've been travelling for almost a year and I sang in many countries. This photo was taken in Turkey, I think it was Bursa. The songs I sang were in English. I sang
"How many roads' from Bob Dylan and "I shall be released" and that kind of stuff. I sang really high, because if I didn't I for sure lost my voice. The higher I sang, the better people in the street could hear me.
I will give you a link so you can hear me singing this song. I must admit, I totally forgot the text and didn't remember in what measure I use to play it. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OJGF3SXrp4

When I left home I travelled on my own for only two weeks. Then I met this 29-years old American girl named Jo and we hitched-hiked together from Denmark via France, Portugal, Spain, Marocco to Turkey. This photo is taken by Jo. She took it because she saw the shop with the name 'singer' behind me. It's somewhere in France.

It might shock you a bit if I tell you I sometimes sang between beggars in front of churches. This photo is taken in Bordeaux. I knew already the beggars up there and they found it no problem if I sat in between them. Actually, they showed a good sense of humour and we all earned enough to buy some food for that day. You can see Jo sitting next to our packages. In my autobiography ( which is unfortunately written in Dutch) I describe how I meet all kind op streetpeople and how sometimes they really impressed me.

Faro, Portugal

Athens, Greece

Padova, Italy

And this is how I looked: always carrying my backpack, guitar and a basket with three kiddies which we found on the road in Italy. We took the kiddies in our shirts, but later on somebody gave me the basket while I was singing in the street. We took them all the way to Turkey and back to Holland. One of them travelled finally with Jo to the VS.

This is the way Jo looked like. When I was singing in the streets she enjoyed me often by sitting near me while she was... sewing ! Sometimes I was really nervous to sing because I thought people might not like my music. She always encouraged me to go on, and sometimes she helped me out to get away from some drunks who bothered me while I was playing.

I have written a lot of storys about my trip in my autobiography, because this trip seemed to be the most basic journey I made in my life.