In the past several years since retirement, I have enjoyed an association with an area music store with two locations. The association had a rather serendipitous beginning as I was interested, in 2004, in finding both a community band to attempt to improve my rejuvenated tuba playing (which had been dormant for 40+ years) and to try my hand at a possible retirement interest: designing/publishing web sites. In a fleeting moments of bravado, I both found the Battle Ground Community Band whose conductor happened to be the owner of the area music stores, and I approached the conductor/owner's adult daughter who was co-owner and manager of the music stores and offered to develop free web sites for each. Luckily, and happily, those connections led to many wonderful hours hanging out with music store staff and providing some of their computer tech support for their two “point-of-sale” networks – and over time led to fun, part time paid work both to do the computer tech support and to assist with account collections after a prior person in that position left.
Now that's probably more than you want or need to know but it provides the explanation for this 2 night stop in Frankfurt. During my work at the music stores, I first learned of an annual musical instrument trade show for music store businesses – held in Anaheim, CA each year. Like all trade shows, this one provides an annual opportunity for music store suppliers/manufacturers to show their wares to music store owners and artists. For a wanna-be musician like me, the show provides the ultimate “toy store” experience – and my association with the music store has allowed me to attend the last two. During the first attendance, I learned about a similar trade show held in Frankfurt that is reputed to be the largest such show in the world – covering an entire fair grounds (“Frankfurt Messe”) and both musical instruments/supplies and “pro-audio” recording, disk jockey and stage presentation equipment. I mentally filed the information away in my ever-full “wish list” of desirable “bucket list” destinations to this “Musikmesse.”
Well, as you have by now guessed, the planning of this trip included attempts to weave in a stop at this event. With considerable research, I arranged for us to stop in Frankfurt enroute to the Netherlands – picking out a possibly convenient Frankfurt hostel, arranged online ticketing to the event, and acquiring appropriate rail tickets.
We arrived in Frankfurt on the afternoon of April 7 and quickly found our hostel nearby and enjoyed some fun conversations with a couple of Finnish engineering students in the hostel lobby/bar, enjoyed some bratwurst at a nearby street market and settled into the sparse but adequate surroundings of a private hostel room. Because of the popularity of the Musikmesse, the hostel accommodations were expensive – but still cheaper than alternatives.
On April 8th we made our way via subway to the fairgrounds entrance and enjoyed a full day of visiting musical product vendors and watching endorsing performers and live demonstrations. We also were particularly happy to (1) happen upon the woman who had given us a tour of the Miraphone tuba factory during our 2009 trip (blogged about here), (2) get reacquainted with the salesman from the Chinese electronics factory I had visited in Shenzhen in 2010 (blogged about here), and (3) get to have some warm, friendly conversation and exchange email addresses with the American who is the Principal Tubist for the Beijing Symphony.
It was a particularly satisfying day just knowing that we had pulled off all the organization necessary to attend this show. I drooled over the abundance of tuba's and drums (my other love) from every manufacturer in the world as well as all the other musical stuff. Deb says she enjoyed the day as well – and thankfully tells me I won't have to spend an entire day at a craft fair in return.
Wow – I guess I got a little wordy. It's easy to do so because I am writing all of these last 3 blog entries while traveling a very comfortable high speed ICE train from Frankfurt to Tilburg, Netherlands – our next, and perhaps our most unusual stop of the trip.
[The last three posts were done on the free wifi provided on the Netherlands trains.]
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