I couldn't tell you exactly what fascinated me about skateboarding. It all started with a birthday wish that turned into a pink department store skateboard with a lot of plastic on it. In the village where I lived as a kid, however, there were two or three older skaters from whom I bought a used board shortly after. I had two friends, that was 89, 90, with whom I started to skate. And then a Wetterau clique formed quite quickly. Ee drove together through the villages, built ramps together. But most of the time we went to Karben, where there was the Mini Ramp. To be honest, I think I skateboarded almost exclusively in Karben Miniramp for the first ten years. That's where you met the people and that's where it all kind of started. In the beginning it was just a lot of building ramps, reading magazines, getting rides from your parents to skateparks, always with a bunch of friends. Later Michel or Christoph, who were a bit older, drove us, and then we went EVERYWHERE you could skateboard. We went to Frankfurt, went to the Hauptwache or the airport, and also to the Konstablerwache, which is downtown Frankfurt. There we were the younger ones, the not-so-established ones. We were more interested in what the others were doing, and integrated ourselves a bit into the Frankfurt scene. We knew a few people already,who came to Karben regularly because they knew the miniramp. At that time, it was one of the few really good miniramps in the area. We where a clique of seven to nine people who always did stuff together. And you always got to know new people, who in turn also knew other spots to which we then also went, and so you just got around quite a bit. At that time, it was just coming up in Germany, skateboarding, it was something new, something exciting, and I kind of got addicted to it (laughs).

It started earlier, I don't even know if it was during skate time. I was so fascinated by everything that came from over there. We went to the bank to change money into dollars so we could get the crazy drinks and chips and everything from the vending machines in the barracks. We collected the cans, too. That was in in the teenage years, for sure. I also played basketball, although I can't remember exactly when I started. As far as the barracks in Friedberg are concerned, I definitely have a connection with them when it comes to basketball, because we used to go and play there. The Americans simply had the best court. With a wooden floor. I still remember that.

At that time, hip hop and skateboarding came up, and as a skater you always looked a bit different... It was just that so many things came over from America at that time, which were new to us, which were crass, which we wanted to do. And of course, we were also influenced by clothing. At the beginning of the nineties there was a very influential video called Big Pants, Small Wheels by Plan B. Everyone walked around with wide pants and wheels that were barely bigger than the ball bearings. Because at that time the money was not there, by the way, my mother sewed me the first wide pants. We followed trends, wore the shoes, that were popular at that time. The skate shoes from Visions, Airwalk and so on. Things you saw in the magazines. You still read a lot of magazines, like the Monster. We were soaking that up. There just weren't that many sources. There were magazines, friends who influenced you, whom you followed. At school, you were always the one who looked a bit different and was different. That was our thing (laughs).

I can also remember in winter, when we were driven by my mother to the S-Bahn to Wöllstadt, with the S-Bahn to Karben, there was no industrial area at that time. We walked across the fields to the miniramp, stayed there all day, and then went home again in the evening. If it was November, you might have scraped the ramp free with an ice scraper until you had a spot where you could warm up, and then drive more and more off the ramp. What trips those were! What we did everything to go skateboarding.

We have always looked with admiration at the courage of the Americans. How headless they skateboard. Without thinking. "What trick should I do?" "Okay, I'll just try that one without thinking too much about it." This shredding, just accelerate, ride, not necessarily doing many different complicated tricks. And well, those were Ami’s, that was always a fascination.

We used to see each other in Karben, I can't remember exactly, but I mean that they told me about this trip, that I was fascinated by the idea, that I wanted to go along. But they had to come to my house first. I was 18 or 19, and my mother wanted to get to know them first. She wanted to know who I was going with. So they came to our house, to pick me up. You know, to me it was already clear to me that I would go along. (laughs) And I remember that my mother had made schnitzel, which we had halfway through the trip. They were so enthusiastic about the schnitzels! After that I was the German Schnitzel Boy. Those are the associations that stick on you. (laughs)

My Mother gave them the seal of approvoal, and I went with them to Amsterda, finally. They had an old S-Class Mercedes. For them it was simply important to have a car that could drive over 200 km/h on the highway. It was an eighties Mercedes. We slept then on gas stations, on the parking lot, in the grass. We took a shower in the gas stations. That's what they said right at the beginning: hotel and so on? we don't need to worry about that! We just sleep somewhere. We have our army sleeping bags, and we also have one for you, we sleep in the car, or somewhere. We go there, we go skating, and then we go back. For me it was like: Bamm! Awesome! I'm totally on board with that.

I actually did it, with the support of my parents. The condition was that I finish my education, and then we'll get the money together, then you can go to college in the USA. My plan was to go to America and stay there. There was an organization, I think they were called Terre de langue, which arranged a college place for me. I first tried to get in through a scholarship. But that didn't work out. There were various tests in Frankfurt, but I didn't get a scholarship anywhere. So, I financed it through my parents. We calculated how much money I needed, what it would cost to study at a community college in the USA. Then I went to Chicago to study economics.

I was actually there for 7 months. But the money was just not enough. What I had would have been enough for accommodation and tuition fees, but not for food, clothing, travel costs, etc. As a student, I was only allowed to do part-time jobs at the college itself, which were very poorly paid. Realizing that what I had was simply not enough, also led me to visit Jeff. That was after four months that I had to realize: my money will never be enough for two years.

I remember that there was another skatepark in the immediate vicinity of Jeff's house where we went a couple of times, but I forgot the name of it. Well, and that's about it, what I remember from the trip to Florida. Oh well, the car almost broke down. There was this huge mountain...and I got lost. I took a wrong turn somewhere in the direction of Tennesse. I realized that I was on the wrong track because it was getting colder and not warmer, as it should have been. Suddenly it started snowing (laughs). But I only drove two hundred miles in the wrong direction. I didn't have a cell phone back then, I just had a classic road map. It was all a bit crazy. I wanted to take the car back to Germany later, but of course that was way too expensive. I called my parents and told them that I was coming back to Germany. They asked if I was coming to visit, and that's when I had to confess to my mother that I'd run out of money, that I was coming back to stay.

For me it's just an American sport and I've always been more interested in American sports than in German sports. And that's still the case: soccer doesn't give me anything.I do it now with the kids every now and then, because it's a community sport that brings a lot of people together. But I've only ever been really interested in American sports, primarily basketball, that I've played it for a long time. Skateboarding has always been a great passion of mine. For me, everything came together culturally: basketball, hip hop and maybe, I thought, I'm just in the wrong country, I have much more fun with the things that are offered in America culturally. And skateboarding was just fully part of it, for me. That’s why I wanted to go to the big country. In those years I never thought about politics. Never thought how I would live there with a family someday. There was just the big dream of wanting to do it, to go there, at all costs.

My problem with the Americans finally became this open, shallow friendship. Of course, I first tried to make friends at college. There, as a foreign student, you were packed together with all the other foreign students. So my first friends were Asians, I don't remember from which country. Those were the first contact. I remember a guy from Turkey with whom I was friends. I also have party photos with this guy. That was the first clique in Chicago.

And of course, I wanted to make friends with Americans, too. Then I also found a clique, but they were just too crass for me, as far as drugs were concerned. I had a really hard time dealing with the fact that I, twenty years old, couldn't just buy alcohol for myself. And it was apparently harder to get hold of alcohol than weed, pills, or anything else. I went to clubs a few times with these guys or to parties. But then eventually, they got weird. One of them owned a house. He had had an accident and got a lot of money from the insurance company. So he bought this house, where he lived with all his friends. But at some point, it got so weird in there that I said: Nah, I don't want that, I'm going skating now. I'm just going skateboarding, done, and I don't care who I meet. And then I actually met people who were really cool. That was about two months before I went back to Germany. That's when I got to know the skate scene, met cool people, went to parties in downtown Chicago for the first time, which was a shame because I already knew I had to leave soon. It was just getting really cool, because I had met the right people. Well, and then I had to leave again...(laughs).

If you're interested, the story of how I got there is pretty funny. I arrived at the airport and there was no one there to pick me up. Which was because my fax ultimately confirming my arrival had never arrived at the college. So I was standing there at the airport and I had to figure out how to make a phone call to the only phone number I had. That was the number of the counselor for foreign students at the college who, after I waited a few hours at the airport, took me in for a week at her home. She then took care of a host family because that was the plan for me: to come stay with a host family. It was a typical American family – an older couple, the children already out of the house, who had taken in foreign guest students for years. I lived with the family and I got to know the typical life in the suburbs on the south side of Chicago. They were quite surprised that I listen to so much black hip hop (laughs), they asked me a few times to turn the music down a bit, or to listen with headphones. That's when I realized, this is something unfamiliar here - for them, at least. But it was really a very, very nice family that I lived with, and the fact that I moved out had to do with money. I try to figure how I could save money, then I moved in with a Polish fellow student, a girl. That was shortly after I had visited Jeff. I just tried to make the stay as long as possible. But for me, even those seven months were like two years. I still feel like I grew incredibly there. The first time away from home, alone, in a foreign country - I grew incredibly during this time, and the stories I experienced, I have told for many years and still like to tell them. I simply made an incredible amount of experiences, it was exciting.

I remember that we just ran into the ray barracks to play basketball there. And I remember how everything suddenly stopped. Everything was fenced off. I'm not sure if there were fences at all before. If they were there before, and they just closed the gates?… or if maybe they really didn't exist before…I don’t know… The Housing Areas, I would say, have always been completely open to everyone. You could just meet Americans there, easily. We knew that there were good basketball courts where you could always go, where you could always meet Americans, who knew how to play. I had a friend in Friedberg, with whom I went to the Barracks and the other basketball courts to play with Americans. You could just play along, it was such an openness, them asking us if we wanted to play. And we did that for a really long time and then it just didn't work anymore. These friendships, these encounters were no longer possible. That was then sealed off.