We arrived bright and early at the Tegel airport, which was located a few minutes outside of Berlin. We were pleasantly greeted by our very generous coordinator, Simone, who we associated with the Red Van.

She took us to the Abion Spreebogen Waterside Hotel, but we found out that we have arrived too early for check-in so we hung out and visited Schlecker, a store similar to CVS. We also took a leisurely walk through the Tiergarten towards the Cultural Center. Seeing the festival grounds and the performance stage got us even more excited. When we returned to the hotel, they even allowed us to have a late complimentary brunch where we delightfully pigged out on seasoned sausage and meatballs, fried potato pockets, scrambled eggs with chives, breads and pastries, and myriad kinds of yogurts and granola mixes. The best part was the self-squeezed orange juice stand. You also can’t go wrong with the multi-vitamin juice. But there were some things that I dared not try:

Satisfied and filled with food, we happily checked into our rooms and napped until our afternoon rehearsal.

Our rehearsal took place indoors at the Center, in a large area that had cool wall chalk drawings of tikis and a spacious stage. This was our chance to meet the sound engineers and stage managers, who were all extremely nice and respectful people (unlike many of those in the US), and to take as much time to soak in our surroundings and re-create that special Waitiki magic.

tiki drawings

Unfortunately, a couple key players were missing and we were still getting over some jetlag, but it was still helpful to play through the setlist. I always have an interesting experience with sound production equipment; I like to see what the professionals use. They gave me a simple tiny mic with some putty-like substance for adhesiveness. At first I let them place it underneath the strings between the bridge and tailpiece, but I got worried when it left some sticky residue on the surface as I pried it off. No putty on varnish please! For the concert, I attached it to the underside of the tailpiece. It worked out well I suppose. At least I was able to move around while I played but I still had to be mindful of the heavy winds in the area we were performing in.

After the rehearsal, Tim, Zaccai, Jason, Randy, and I ventured out into the city. We were all in the mood for some REAL German food, and we had to find it fast because man, we were starving. We got on the S-bahn at Bellevue and rode for 3 stops until Heckescher Markt. Then we walked to “Orange-burger” Strasse and found a place to eat (thanks to Lonely Planet).

beef stew with spatzle

It was interesting to see so many Asian restaurants along the way, particularly Japanese sushi places. Being musicians, we then went to the B-flat jazz club to check out the music scene. Man, we were shocked and amazed at how packed the place was on a Wednesday night. The cats were good too, but I was so exhausted that I just passed out after just 10 minutes. Later I learned that the other guys passed out too. Oops!

We finally got out of there and split up. Randy, Cai and I decided to head home (yes, we’re party poopers)… but unfortunately, we were in bad luck and then night ended on a sour chord with a run-in with the S-bahn train inspectors (ask us about the story). We were foreigners and they didn’t even give us a break! Anyways, we got home and said hi to Don Tiki before heading off to bed. What a day!

Allo, Guten Tag!

(Hmm..that pretty much sums up all the German I managed to soak in while I was there…)

I am finally back from two weeks of intense and crazy traveling. The Music Learning Leadership at UMUC started off well, as Randy and I were the technology consultants and had to be in charge of maintaining and constantly updating the MLL Web Sourcebook. If you’re interested, please read the articles about music integration and leadership, the corresponding school reports and case studies, and the video and Powerpoint presentations right on the website. We worked hard on it, yeah!

Pre-DAY 1:
Although we were dedicated to the MLL conference, we were very excited to leave on Tuesday for Berlin. The Continental flight from BWI to Newark was pleasant. As soon as we met up with the rest of Waitiki, things got even more exciting. We were even surprised that Don Tiki’s Delmar and Haejung showed up on the same flight. As we filed onto the plane, I could smell the newness of the plane and was impressed to find that each seat had its own touch screen monitor. The goodies that were displayed were various forms of entertainment from German training program to casino games. Since I knew we would be arriving in Berlin early in the morning, I decided to sleep as much as I could after watching Batman Begins. Randy, on the other hand, was way too excited to sleep, and he (as well as others) paid the consequences when we finally arrived at the Abion Spreebogen Hotel. Later I found out that Spree was the river the hotel was situated on.

Spree near our hotel

Our hotel was super nice; you can check out the video of one of the rooms below.

More later!