Last night I was picking up, slightly earlier than usual, at Newark Airport. My cargo’s normal arrival time is around midnight, but last night I actually got to float down the Garden State Parkway with weekend traffic returning to New York City.

At midnight on a Sunday, only British Airways and Virgin arrive, packed with silent business travelers. It’s just me and the limo drivers, sleepy and accustomed to the scene. But last night, while I was waiting for the much earlier BA flight, I watched the crowd spill from the LOT Polish arrival, enjoying the evidence that McWorld hasn’t yet conquered us. There is still something to distinguish every culture.

The arrivals area was another world, full of chatter and smiles, the grandmothers exiting with open, eager faces, the families greeting with flowers and kisses, caring nothing for the “Do Not Pass” barrier. It took me back to my first trips to Russia, when passing through the arrivals doors was like crashing a party where all were loved and you knew nobody.

And then they all left, and it was me and the limo drivers again. A long young man straggled out. Suit, tie, small black case — the first of the BA business crowd? Nope. Look at the shoes. Shiny tasselled loafers with a suit. Sure enough, he was speaking Russian on the phone. We all have our quirks, our dead giveaways of dress and manner. The American backpackers with inevitable khakis and shoes like SUVs. The British businessman with that open pink shirt and slumped navy jacket that an American always just fails to imitate. The perfect Church’s shoes. The Russian youth in track suits or just-too-short skirts and stilettos. And the Dutch so damn tall.

Secretly, I still love going to the airport (except the appalling Delta and American Airlines terminals at JFK — unspeakable), even with the horrid drawbacks of air travel these days. I’m easily pleased, and the Newark Airport dreary arrivals hall reminds me of a world to be seen and discovered.

I enjoy street performers (or “buskers”) when I travel because they provide a little lagniappe to my visit; a little dollop of smile to my day.  The unexpected pleasure of it thrills me, even when I’m perhaps already having a pretty good time in London, Christchurch,  Istanbul or even Micanopy, Florida.

That’s why it was such fun to read “Pearls Before Breakfast,” about virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell performing anonymously on his Stradivarius for commuters one busy morning in the L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington, DC (free registration may be required to read the piece, which also has an audio and video clip. There’s also a discussion with the article’s author here.)

Hat tip to DJ Jeffrey Blair on public radio station KMFA, Classically Austin 89.5, for talking about the story this morning while I was on the laptop and could immediately go find the link.

The upshot of the story is that nobody really recognized the young guy playing the fabulous music, the “art without a frame” in the words of the article’s author Gene Weingarten, but some passersby did stop and listen and Bell at least made $32.17.   Some took the time to appreciate artistry and beauty.  Of all the demographics that morning, it was the children who stopped, every time, tried to listen and were shooed along by their harried parents.

I hope I’ve taught my kids to pause and to listen and to enjoy the world around them. I hope I’ve also taught them busker etiquette….that you pay a little something if you stand there and listen or watch their performance, that you clap when the music/act is finished, that you smile and interact with the performer and that’s perfectly OK, even though they are strangers.

Because they aren’t really strangers, those folks I’ve watched in London’s Covent Garden or Key West’s Mallory Square or some nook on the MBTA subway in Boston.   If they’re halfway talented, they’re bringing delight and beauty into my travels, and I thank them for that.

Technorati tags:  travel, busker, street performer, Joshua Bell

A scattered round-up of travel writing and related Web entries:

Literary Traveler: Okay, I admit ignorance. I didn’t know the author of Pippi Longstocking was Swedish. Stephanie Nikolopoulos did, though, and has written an essay about the Pippi exhibits at Sweden’s Junibacken Museum. She spends a lot more time reminiscing about her own Pippi memories than taking us along for the tour, but still, I got a welcome hit of nostalgia thinking about nail soup.
Recent articles also include a Da Vinci Code tour of Southern France, and the influence of Norwegian fjords on Roald Dahl.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Travel writer and editor of the Sun-Sentinel’s travel section Tom Swick has a tongue-in-cheek response to Drew Barrymore’s declaration that she’s sick of Hollywood and is going to run away to be a travel writer. His usual expertise (both writing and traveling) is also at work in his essay about eating and driving in India.

Ask the Pilot: Patrick Smith’s weekly column for Salon branches out from his usual–and welcome–task of educating the public about the goings-on in the cockpit and air traffic control towers. This time, he’s on a trip of his own, hitching a plane ride in West Africa, supposedly the world’s “most dangerous place to fly.”

Wild Blue Yonder: Lonely Planet author Carolyn McCarthy maintains her own blog detailing her travels in Central America and her life in rural Chile. A recent post starts a series about Patagonia’s back country by trekking with a friendly local. Wish someone would tie homemade marmalade on a pack horse when I go hiking.

SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle) Travel: Susan Lendroth has written a short but curiously evocative piece about the lasting impression our first encounter with a place has on us, no matter how many times we visit again, or how much we travel. At first I thought it was a little sappy; then I remembered how the initial experience–even the most banal cab ride–in every country I’ve lived in crops up every time I return.

Far Flung Magazine: Couched among a video game fantasy during a wild drive in Tanzania and a dreamy piece about Alaska’s Inside Passage is Rory MacLean’s essay addressing the personal duties of the modern travel writer. “Today it is no longer enough to travel across a country, rather one must travel into it,” he says. “The travel writer becomes less a geographer of place, more of the human heart.”

Slate Travel & Food: Seth Stevenson contemplates the possibilities of breeding tolerance in Dubai (an older post, but worth reading) and Matthew Polly butts up against a war museum and pets a tiger in Thailand.

NPR: This week journalist Philip Reeves is reporting from the Ganges River, in five dispatches chronicling the old and modern, poor and newly wealthy, of India while he travels the river. If you’ve missed his dispatches on Morning Edition, you can listen to them here. The link also leads to pictures and Reeves’s longer Reporter’s Notebook entries.