Thursday December 2

Maja:

Waking up in the hostel and I keep feeling surprised about how nice this place really is. The beds are completely comfortable and we’re alone in the room. I slept OK, but I’m still tired from the journey yesterday. I’m quite excited about being in Berlin. I’ve never really been here before. I mean, I’ve been here once, during a trip after high school with a bunch of my friends, but we were only here for one night, so I didn’t really get to experience much of it. Berlin has been a place I’ve always wanted to come back to. And now I’m finally here. The shower feels amazing, and I pretty much have everything I need right here. Dressed and ready, we find our way to the local supermarket to buy some breakfast, which we eat in the well used common room/kitchen which is filled with people. No-one is really talking to us and we don’t make the effort to talk to anyone. We’re still a bit incognito, we haven’t even got a guitar yet. So what we need to do is to find a decent guitar shop so we can start with what we actually need to do. We take a walk down the east side gallery, in other words, the Berlin wall. Then, when we’re finally able to read the map a little bit better, we manage to stumble into the guitar shop which turns out to be a little repair shop with some expensive looking guitars for sale in the back. And the people in there don’t seem that chatty, so we go to the next guitar shop that we find on the map. That also turns out to be a little repair shop but this one is run by an Englishman called Gary, who seems to really enjoy a chat. We tell him what we’re about and he gives us the directions to a music store that’s big and is going to have everything we need. Yes. I’m delighted, finally we’re getting somewhere. After having a really nice chat we start the walk to a store called Just Music, which is huge. It’s a five story music shop and on every floor they have a theme. You could literally spend the whole day there without any problems, testing out everything you need. But me and Mark have been walking the whole day and we’re getting a bit tired now. We just want to find the equipment we need, and then go home so we can actually start with what we need to do tomorrow.

Mark:

It’s all very well having the car in Europe now to ferry stuff around in, but with Maja initially flying to Sweden and me flying here to Berlin, we couldn’t possibly bring the big things we needed. We’re talking about a guitar, with attendant guitar bag, and PA speaker, and trolley to carry it around on. Well, we would have needed a new guitar anyway as the one in Ireland can’t be plugged in, which is vital for our setup. But speaker and trolley? Forget packing that little bundle into carryon, so here we are.

Back in Ireland I made a bit of a mistake when looking for music shops; I looked up acoustic shops. Which is why we end up in luthierland and not guitarshopland.

So, thankyou Gary who couldn’t have been more accurate in his description or more fitting in his enthusiasm for Just Music. It’s the biggest music shop either of us has ever seen. I thought DLX in Sweden was big. And it is huge. But one floor of this place is bigger than DLX and it has four floors. Keys, drums, guitar and bass, and sound, each floor also stocking other equipment loosely related to its speciality. Actually there are five floors if you include the miscellaneous lobby. Oh. Six floors. It also has a restaurant thing at the top. It’s big, OK.

Maja:

OK.

Mark:

These kinds of decisions are always tough, but it’s great that the staff are so uniformly excellent and knowledgeable in their fields. The attendants on each floor totally do the thing they sell, so the guy guiding us through guitars is a serious gigging musician, and the guy who takes us through speakers is a fully functioning DJ. It’s fair to say the people in here really know their stuff. We find the acoustic guitar section and it’s almost impossible to know where to begin to find The One. But when we’ve picked out our favourite three from the hundreds of guitars they have, we’re delighted when our guide, without having seen our choices, makes two recommendations and we already have those exact models in the music room ready to try out. Yes. The music room. Little silent havens off to the side of the main rooms where you can go and play all you want and also try different amps, all in your own time and all in private. It’s a wonderful facility to have and we make the most of it. Our new friend suggests a guitar amp or two in here that could also work with the vocals. We put that under consideration but say that we will also venture downstairs to the specialised speaker place. But first, to try out what we have here. We have a few that we really like, but when it comes to actually playing them, they don’t quite sing to us. Then we come to the Cort, which is one of the recommendations. And yes. This will be ours. That done, we then get taken to see the guitar bags and find the perfect combination of soft and hard. Hard case for flying, but also superlight so that we can carry it around on our backs to gigs without any hassle at all. OK. Speaker next. 

When we get down there, we’re taken straight to something that looks small and powerful but is really expensive and makes no sense. Is this what they call entry level here? Then, when our new friend here takes us for a closer look at it, he starts to talk about where the batteries go and my penny drops. Oh. They think we want something for busking. No no no. That’s not what we’re looking for at all. We clear that up and we’re taken into the DJ room to look at the real gear. As we do, and we talk about the kinds of things we need and what we’re really looking for – no DI for the guitar for a start thankyou very much – we start to get treated with a little more respect and understanding. Professional to professional if you like, and the whole tone of the conversation changes. Right, the guy realises. I’ve got two people here who at least have some idea of what they’re talking about, and a whole lot of experience. How can I help?

The way it’s set up in here is that all the speakers are set up around the room, halfway to the ceiling, all as if in a nightclub. Then our friend goes into a little cubbyhole type place to stand behind a desk. I have the guitar plugged directly into that desk and he flips a switch, and with that I’m playing through a different speaker. This makes it really easy to identify the one we want. We’re now also talking far more sensible and logical prices than what we began with. And we’re looking at sensible weights too; we can’t go too big or heavy because, we explain, we have to be able to put it on a trolley, along with microphone stands and stuff, and walk around with it, sometimes for considerable distances. More than that, we have to know we’ll be able to pick the whole thing up and carry it up and down stairs, much like I have so many times with gigs around London so I know exactly how this on foot transit thing is supposed to work. While we’re talking about stands, we have a little chat here and decide that yes, we will also buy a stand for the speaker rather than try to find a suitable stool or table for it each time. Besides, such things aren’t always available, and a stand is so much more professional and practical anyway. 

So, great. Now here we are and practically set up. Guitar, case, and speaker with stand. All we need to finish the job is the aforementioned trolley. No idea where to go to buy one of those, but that can be a mini project for tomorrow. But then, just as we’re about to pay for all this stuff on the ground floor, I see exactly what we’re looking for. They have a whole bunch of little lightweight collapsible trolleys down here. Now we have something to put the speaker on to take it ‘home’ as well. Perfect. That really is job done. 

Maja:

I find it quite cool that we’ve managed to buy everything at once. And it was quite impressive how the sound guy at the PA department slowly started to realise that he was dealing with professionals who actually knew what they wanted. I don’t really believe that you should have to prove that you really know your stuff before you’re properly attended to at a store, but it was very cool that, once we did, to see how the attitude towards us changed.