Andy spent some time driving around in the barren mountains east of Madrid. It all looked like a movie set. Was it really a part of the same continent he had been on until now? The red dust everywhere, the rocky spirals, the canyons, the unnaturally even plains, all of it was so foreign to him. Sometimes he would just stop to take a walk and he felt like he was walking on Mars.

The weather was not good enough to allow him to sleep in his car, though, and it even rained a bit. Andy was forced to leave the dirt roads, to get back on track. He was going to Madrid because even he knew that name, even though he knew nothing about Spain. Surely there would be decent places to stop by and play the ukulele for a while over there? He was pretty confident about going busking, even thought he couldn’t have played his instrument for the life of him.

He soon found out how big the city was. More than anything else, it was a large place, mostly built out of concrete and housing thousands upon thousands of people with a desk job. A city was a city, no matter what country you were in. Apart from a people in it and the shape of the old town, this giant human construct could have been built over Oslo or Bangkok just the same. He parked the car on the city’s edge, where you could find the giant supermarkets, the gas stations, the warehouses.

The best way he could shake that feeling of entering a great prefabricated construction was to immerse himself into the old town and so he did. Andy erred through the streets, ukulele in a plastic bag. The smaller the streets were, the better. He stumbled like that upon a lot of small squares, fountains, market places that had been completely buried under the bigger urban projects. Winter was slowly creeping over Madrid and he didn’t find that many people busking. There was one girl who played guitar pretty well, though. At first he didn’t feel like stopping, because all she was playing was some kind of loud reggae music. She was pretty tan, with blonde dreadlocks framing her face. Her nose and ears were pierced. She was wearing baggy clothes. She sang loudly in a broken English, mostly about world peace and Babylonians, apparently.

He fled the scene, not wanting to have any part in it, but the streets around were so deserted that he resigned himself to go and talk to her. Maybe she would know other decent musicians would could teach him, or a good place to play music? He went back to where she was and sat on a stone bench facing her. Apart from Andy, only three people attended the road-side show. Still singing, the girl acknowledged him with a quick nod and a smile. At least she was in a good mood.

Andy waited until the end of the show. People gradually left, and he hoped the girl wouldn’t be creeped out by an unknown old man waiting for her. In his defense, with the weight he had lost at the worst of his crisis, he probably couldn’t have done much harm. At some point she took a break and he had the opportunity to have a casual chat with her.

She was holding a metal gourd and drinking in it. He dropped a few Euros in the hat in front of her.

“Muchas gracias,” she said, but her Spanish was worse than her English. “Thank you for listening!”

“Yeah, it was nice,” he said, even though he had hated it. “Say, do you know a bit of the musical scene here?”

She screwed her face. “Musical… You look for people who play music?” She was not that fluent, was she. Well, he was in Spain, it was a wonder someone understood him at all.

“Yeah, people good with music,” he said slowly, attempted to be understood. He’d better cut the chatter and get to the heart of the matter, or it would take years to be understood. “I want to learn ukulele. Do you know someone good?”

She became very animated. “You play ukulele?” she said, misunderstanding, apparently. She put her two thumbs up. “Ukulele is great. Play with me?”

Andy was taken aback. “No, I don’t know how to play, that’s the problem.” She didn’t get it. It would be simpler to show her. He took out the instrument from the plastic bag. She clapped happily and extended her hands.

“I can try?” she said. He handed her the ukulele, thinking he was wasting his time. She didn’t understand what he wanted at all and she didn’t seem to be that interested in understanding. Spontaneity had its limits. Sometimes, it dumbed you down.

She plucked the strings a few times, letting out a much better sound he had ever managed to get, then she frowned. “Not tuned,” she said and she tuned it faster than he thought possible. Now it almost sounded good. She attempted a few chords, then got started on a powerful, enthusiastic song that sounded like rockabilly, a bit. Maybe she was better than he knew.

After half a song she stopped and handed back the instrument, smiling. “Ukulele is not bad,” she said, praising the quality of the instrument. “You play with me?”

“I don’t know how to play very well,” he said.

“No,” she said, reacting like she thought he was being too humble, “it’s good! You can play!”

Andy felt tired. Given how this conversation had gone she wouldn’t get it until he had proven he couldn’t go beyond two chords and keep a rhythm going. He sat down next to her and tried to position two fingers on a chord he knew could work. He started strumming awkwardly, changed the position of his fingers a few times and stopped. It sounded like a five years old on a child-size guitar. “There,” he said, “you see that I can’t play, right?”

She was an optimist beyond salvation. “You’re good,” she said, and she started correcting his posture. Turned out the instrument was up-side-down, that is to say, he was holding the body with the left hand instead of the right.

“Oh,” he said, feeling stupid and impressed at the same time, “that makes sense!” Indeed, it was already a lot easier to play. He just had to learn again the handful of chords he had managed to find on his own. She kept correcting him and taught him a few of those chords.

“OK,” she said while he was playing a very simple two-chords loop, “keep doing this!” She took her guitar and started playing along. Andy had a hard time believing it. They were playing together? He wasn’t bad enough, or she was good enough to make it sound like music? The stupefaction broke his concentration. He messed up and the had to start again. Still. He was playing an instrument in a band. If two people randomly meeting was a band.

They kept playing for a little while, then Andy felt his fingers cramping up a little. He didn’t have the stamina necessary to play for hours on end. He thanked her and asked if he could come again the next day. Maybe she was the teacher he needed, after all.

“Yes, it would be good!” she said. “You have phone number? I am not sure I play here exactly tomorrow.”

“Not really,” said Andy. He still had the French phone Julien had handed him, but it was probably useless here in Madrid. “Maybe I can look for you in the streets?” He made hand gestures all along, hoping to be understood better.

“Yes,” she said, apparently getting it. “You can look in the afternoon. I play somewhere, in the center.” She made a broad gesture. Then she extended her hand and said: “My name is Alicja. You?”

He shook her hand. “Andy,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

He had to go now and so did she. He didn’t want to get lost in awkward small talk with someone who didn’t English fluently. It was better to end it there. He spent some more time strolling around and was amazed by how the city was so colorful, in shades of yellow and pink. As evening came, the streets became more animated. It was also getting colder, so Andy booked a cheap youth hostel and settled inside. That night, he thought about how easily he had dissed her when he didn’t even know her. What a dick. She probably had a lot more to give him than he was expecting her too and she didn’t shy away just because he was a strange old man wanting to learn guitar out of nowhere. That kind of faith and boldness were rare qualities. He’d better take proper care of his new… teacher friend.

After a good night’s rest he felt even more enthusiastic about it. Andy always had had a slow build-up. He played on his own in the morning, surprisingly earning him his first two Euros when a passer-by left a coin on the jacket he had taken off for comfort. He would have to invest and get his own hat soon. He joined the girl in the afternoon and they played again.

Alicja was a traveler as well. She had come from Poland two months ago and was busking her way across Europe as a sort of challenge to herself. She only stayed in a place for the time it took her to get the money to move to her next destination. Maybe one day she wouldn’t want to move anymore and then she’d make new plans. For now, there was no plan.

That brought them together quite well, as Andy’s plan wasn’t much either beyond this idea of moving south. She taught him quite a lot over the course of a week. He learned about guitar and ukulele, some busking skills, but also reggae culture and how Alicja lived it. He didn’t really know what to think of it, but at least he wasn’t patronizing anymore. She was twenty-two, she was free to think and play whatever she wanted.

When she gathered enough money from busking, she asked Andy if he wanted to follow her to Valencia, the next city on her loose roadmap. He agreed: as much as he liked having some me-time, Andy was happy to get a new travel buddy.

There was only so much you could talk about by yourself.