Last September I headed over to Germany with my quartet for some gigs. We landed in Frankfurt and when we stepped off the plane we saw a suitcase fall from the luggage compartment and hit the pavement. We made some jokes about it then went inside to wait for our luggage. After waiting for a while and a bit longer than that we started sharing lost luggage stories and instrument related mishaps. We were quite relieved when our luggage including the double bass finally showed up. The bass was in an over sized flight case which we had to store at the airport. When we opened the case Toggi, the bassist, almost fell on the floor crying, Scott and I were frozen in shock and disbelief and Oskar was on the phone immediately. The bass neck was broken! How the hell did that happen?

Thankfully Oskar had arranged to meet his saxophone repair guy while in Frankfurt and he had sent his father to pick Oskar up at the airport. So Oskar was on the phone with him asking if he knew any bass-makers. Turned out there were two in his town so Oskar and Toggi grabbed the broken bass to hopefully have it fixed and Scott and I were left with the luggage.Later Toggi called me to tell me they were on their way back to Frankfurt with a borrowed bass. His was being repaired and would hopefully be fixed in the morning.

So we met up at the train station and headed out to Jazzkeller Frankfurt. I thought I knew exactly where it was but turned out I was wrong. When we got off the train we walked over to Bochenheimerstraße but I couldn't find the club. It was on a little side street called Kleine Bochenheimerstraße and noone we asked seemed to have a clue. I tried calling the club but only got their answering machine. So we're standing there, getting a bit stressed that we might just miss the gig, when we noticed an Apple store. Yeah! We ran inside, brought up google maps and saw that we were about 20 steps or so from the club. In the image the pink dot represents us and the red balloon is the club. A note to self: have google map jpgs of all the venues and hotels saved in your phone for the next tour.

I think we were all a bit tired when we hit the sack that night. What a first day! Poor Toggi had to get up early the next day to go pick up his bass which had hopefully been successfully glued together.