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Cleaner/Sweepers Available In 3 Adjustable Sizes!ANALOG CORNERto visit and share with AnalogPlanet
and Stereophile readers (and viewers),
and here was the perfect opportunity.
Plus, I figured it would present me
with a serious test of my stamina. Hey,
I have retired friends my age, and dead
ones. It’s good to test yourself.
I’m writing this on the home leg
of the journey—on the airplane from
Munich to JFK airport—and not only
am I still here, I’m wide awake after
almost two crazy weeks on the road.
That’s partly because I’m buzzed and
full of energy, but also partly because
I didn’t get the business class upgrade
I was banking on, so I’m sitting in the
very cramped last row of an Airbus
A350-900.
As soon as I’d posted my plans on
AnalogPlanet and Facebook, I received
an offer from a stranger to pick me
up at Berlin’s Tegel airport at 8:50am
and take me to my hotel. When I told
Sharon, she reminded me: “You don’t
even know who this person is!” True,
but he knew who I was, and that was
good enough for me!
I lucked out on the flight over with a
business class upgrade, so I could sleep
flat after consuming too much wine. I
love sleeping on airplanes—especiallyEasyJet flight, and from Geneva to
Winterthur on a Sunday afternoon
train, and from Zurich to Prague on
a Monday afternoon plane and on a
late Tuesday evening plane back to
Berlin, where Optimal’s Andreas Kohl
would pick me up and drive the two-
plus hours to Röbel. On Wednesday
morning and afternoon, I would tour
Optimal, and then we’d drive the two
hours plus back to Berlin, where I’d
catch a flight to Munich via Frankfurt,
arriving at my hotel well after 11:00pm
Wednesday. Would I be too tired to
wake up Thursday morning for the
show opening?
It was an insane schedule made
more so by a commitment I’d made
months earlier to play records and
entertain a group of show attendees at
a Friday-evening dinner. That required
me to schlep around, everywhere I
went, a heavy bag of records, in ad-
dition to a nearly 70-lb suitcase filled
with two weeks’ worth of clothing and
an office in a rolling bag. I had to push
those records through airports: No way
I was going to check them with my
luggage.
Being insane, I pursued the insane
schedule. These are all places I wantedamplifier, but up to now the timing
hadn’t worked out. Why not do it after
Making Vinyl Berlin? Of course, they
were busy preparing for the Munich
show and couldn’t babysit a visitor for
five days, but with me that wasn’t a
problem: I didn’t need to spend more
than an afternoon there.
What else could I do? Well, I could
call darTZeel’s Hervé Delétraz and
visit his manufacturing facility. And as
long as I was going to be in Switzer-
land, why not see if Micha Huber of
HiFiction would have time for me to
visit him in Winterthur, just outside of
Zurich, where he manufactures Thales
turntables and tonearms (and now
EMT cartridges, as well)? That could
bring me up to Monday evening, and
then I could fly to Prague and visit GZ
Media, the record-pressing plant, on
Tuesday, and then fly back to Berlin
and find my way to Röbel, home
of Optimal Media—another record-
pressing plant—and then, finally, on
Wednesday evening, fly to Munich in
time for the show’s 9:00am opening
the next day.
The logistics were even tougher than
that sounds. I could get from Berlin to
Geneva Friday evening on a 6:30pm