When her husband was president, First Lady Rosalynn Carter duplicated on a national scale an imaginative exchange program that they had managed with officials from various South American cities while Jimmy Carter was still governor of Georgia.

Called "Friendship Force," the design was that enough Americans from one city would afford and fill a chartered flight to a city elsewhere in the world where approximately the same number of residents would do the same. No hotels were involved. Instead, the plan called for as many hosts as would be needed to accomodate the visitors to each locale. In fact, an effort was made to match folks according to occupation, and hosts would then take guests to work with them.

All of this kept the cost low, and at the end of my second year in Bismarck, I was again looking to bridge time to graduate school. During those two years I had a few scattered weeks in Denver with very little busking. I also had a weekend in Minneapolis where I made the mistake of trying to play inside the privately owned Nicolett Mall only to be quickly informed by a security guard: "We do not allow audible sounds in here."

Friendship Force organizers suggested that we spend half the time with hosts, and the rest on our own or in each other's company. Having always heard that buskers are more accepted, expected, appreciated and make more tips in European cities, I figured that I would busk three afternoons in Hamburg, Germany, during my eight days there. Although it was November, and although it was always overcast and sometimes drizzling, that's exactly what I got.

My host, a reporter for a Hamburg daily, recommended a section of town near her office called Gansemarkt (literally, Goose Market), but I was merely looking for a busy subway stop. Heady it was to play in a foreign country, headier yet to gain several tips within minutes after I began. The reality check appeared in a fine coffee-colored topcoat, a young fellow who stopped in front of me to wave his finger while repeating one of the few German words I understood: Verboten!

His tone of voice and expression made it clear that he was trying to do me a favor, and he sure lived up to the German reputation for infinite patience with visitors who verstehen Deutsch nicht. But I stalled, a busker's instinct even though I did not know it at the time, until another fellow, sensing what was going on, stopped to translate:

"He wants you to know that it is legal for you to play above ground and that you'll do well there."

"It's raining."

They exchanged looks and both laughed. The first fellow rolled his eyes and repeated a phrase he had already used more than once with a gesture of his forearm above his head. The second man spoke, "These buildings have overhangs, and he's right: You will do well up there."

"Danke, sehr danke!" I said, and they answered with short phrases I took to mean "good luck." We all shook hands before they went on to trains somewhat later than the ones they had intended to board.

When I picked up the basket to move, I was disappointed that the several tips were all in coin. But once I was playing above ground in the attractive Gansemarkt, I was again buoyed by a number of quick tips. The rain was no more than a drizzle, and the temperature, though not warm, was comfortable. As were the expressions of so many German people.

About an hour or so went by before I heard a woman's voice above me. She was leaning out of a fifth floor window, as were a few other women from other windows on that floor. Once she had my attention she held up a small white object and motioned that she was about to toss it. They all cheered when I caught it and they, apparently, went back to work.

Inside the paper towel held together by an elastic band were eight coins, Deutschmarks, Germany's basic unit of currency before the advent of the Euro two decades later. Grateful for the effort they had made and for the number of coins, I was still perplexed that all I had made that day, for about 90 minutes of play, was in coin.

However, once I sat down to a pint of beer in a Gansemarkt pub and counted out the coins, I understood the first advantage that a German busker had over an American--and that European and Canadian buskers now have over us.

Many people inclined to tip a busker reach into a pocket feeling for coins. Coins are easy, durable. Some people even like the idea of getting rid of them. Parents and grandparents like the act of handing coins to small children so that they can participate, accomplish a task.

In America, then and now, that coin is almost without exception a quarter or less. In Germany, 1979, the Mark was the equivalent of 55 American cents; today the Euro is $1.27 and rising. Whether the exchange rate is more or less than an American dollar doesn't matter; what matters is that the foreign units are in coin. For Canadian buskers, the advantage is more pronounced, no matter that their dollar never seems to rise above 85 cents on the American, because Canada not only has a one-dollar but a two-dollar coin, a "Two-ney" for its "Looney."

In America, we have seen at least three attempts by the federal government to introduce a dollar coin since 1976. Each attempt has failed largely because the paper dollar was not withdrawn from circulation, as happened in Canada. Since people naturally resist change, we refused change in more ways than one, three times.

In each case the debate was concerned with convenience and with the idea of George Washington's image being replaced by a feminist activist or a Native American guide. One can only wonder what the result might have been if the debate had considered what an exchange of change might mean for those who depend on tips for their livelihood.

But none of this occurred to me until long after the fact. At the time it was simply a heady experience to busk three afternoons in a foreign city, to make more in the November drizzle of Germany than I'd make on a summer Saturday in Denver, and--for all of the restaurants and normal indulges of a tourist--to return to the USA with more money in my pocket than was there when I had left.