You’ll always find the most recent additions at the top of each category – my last update was 22 May 2013.
On an S-Bahn (train)/U-Bahn (subway) car:
- NEW! Another first! While the instrument was familiar (accordion) and the playing was only so-so, the musician bearing said instrument was not only completely aggressive in his demand for money (leaning over the seats of my visiting parents for a full forty or fifty seconds while pushing his plastic cup for donations practically in my poor jet-lagged father’s face — a behavior I’ve never before seen in Berlin — yet somehow still continuing to play), he also cursed at me and then gave me the finger after I gave him a firm “Nein, danke” in an attempt to get him to leave. While some of the musicians we see on the trains aren’t very “good” in a technical sense, they do follow a fairly established etiquette of moving on after just a second or so if you don’t make eye contact or start to reach for money. I suspect this (not quite a) gentleman figured we were a sure thing since we were speaking English and I was showing my parents a map of the transit system when he walked up. At least my parents now have an exciting story about their first full day in Berlin, and I now know to get up and switch cars if I ever see this particular accordionist again…
- A very talented trio whose instruments included an accordion, a violin, and — a first for me on a train — a cello! Their rendition of Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line was fabulous and I happily added an Euro to their outstretched cup.
- Melodica with egg-shaker/amplified recorded music (My all-time least-favorite performance ever – both lazy and derivative, and the two “musicians” were part of a roving pack of similarly outfitted buskers hauling small amps on luggage carts from one subway car to the next at each stop in a clearly organized strategy to score the most amount of coins with the least amount of effort.)
- Accordion (a few too many times, but only because that’s one loud instrument in crowded quarters!)
- Spanish Guitar (only once but so beautiful – one of my favorite performances yet)
In an S-Bahn (train) or U-Bahn (subway) station:
- Country Western Guitar (once)
- Harp (only once so far, sigh)
- Classical Guitar (once)
- Blues Guitar (once)
- Electric Guitar (once)
- Accordion (a few too many times)
- Keyboard (a bunch of times)
- Violin (too many times to keep track of)
- Cello (once)
- Banjo (once)
- Flute (once)
- Saxophone (at least twice)
I should add this category while I’m at it…
Musical-y sounds I’ve heard from our apartment window:
- NEW! Car horns, from a procession passing by (a wedding, it looked like)
- Recorder, being played by either a young neighbor or a student at the Montessori school nearby (hard to tell because of the way our building echoes)
- Church Bells (daily at 8:15 am, noon and 6 pm, Sundays off and on all morning, lucky me!)
- Trumpet (almost every Tuesday, mid-morning)
- Operatic singing (just once so far, coming up through a basement-level apartment building ventilation grate)
