It all started when I stood on a narrow board at the age of three. But then I fell down immediately. It was a homemade thing with rollers on it. And two years later someone moved in with us. He lived with us. He was one or two years older. And he had a board. It was actually just a thing from the toy store. But what he had were American ball bearings. And he said, that's why the board would roll down the hill better than all the otherm toy tore boards. I also wanted to have such a board. And when I was six, I got one. One of those things from the toy store.

No, this didn't roll as cool as the other one. It wasn't really fun either. That's why I kept insisting that I wanted an American board. Then a classmate of mine came along, and he had a board from his brother and said I could buy it for a hundred DM. Sure, I do. Then I picked it up from him. I was about six or seven years old.

From my mother. Our mothers have always supported us. The mothers always said: "Okay. "The fathers always said: "We're not going to spend money on that kind of crap." Anyway, it was the same with Oli. I grew up with him in Unter-Widdersheim. And I think I also got him involved in skating. But he pulled me in, too. He got himself a wide board at the same time as I did. And when I then picked up the new board from my class mate, I went down the hill, through the new development area, and there were the right wheels on it, from the U.S., and they had just much better rubber, and these right ball bearings. In the new development area, the ground was newly asphalted, and I thought I was dying. That was the coolest feeling ever. I really thought I'd never get off the board again.

And then we had a buddy in the neighboring village, Jochen Schenk, don't know if that means anything to you. And he was totally tripped on America. He had all kinds of American stuff, and had also been to the U.S. himself and shopped there.

He really had all kinds of shit. And he also showed us the first skate video back then, which was also when I was six or seven. And when I saw it, I was hooked. First the board, then the video, and then we met with the other skaters from Unter-Widdersheim, Dominik, Schenk and so on, and then we went skating together in the schoolyard, met as a crew and got along. That was the beginning of everything.

That existed, and I also found it interesting. All the other children, the whole village community had been there, there were always lots of people. I also took a look at soccer. I went to a tryout once. But I didn't like it. It started in the dressing room, where they teased each other. Then the coach chased you around the field, and I didn't think that was cool. I preferred to move freely, we just always went off with the BMX or the skateboard, for example, in the quarry, or simply moved with the bikes, skateboards and everything we had through the village.

I experienced a lot of shit at a pretty early age. My parents got divorced early on and things got pretty rough at home. Then I always took my things and went out, did something outside. At some point it started that I always hurt myself when going downhill, first my arm was open and I thought, never mind, I just kept going. At the end of the day I came home and my knees, my hands, my elbows, everything was completely open, slashed. Everything was kaputt. But I didn't care. I wasn't in any pain at all. Anyway, if I've hurt anyone in my life, it's always been myself. I have a self-destructive streak, which maybe just has to do with the family circumstances I grew up in.

My grandmother wanted me to play tennis. They gave me a tennis racket, but in exchange they wanted me to give up my skateboard. I was often laughed at for wanting to become a professional skater. Everyone always said that wasn't possible here. I could forget that. There were always many people who tried to talk me out of my dreams. But I always thought, why are you doing this? I want to do what I feel like doing. But now I am without anything. I've actually lost everything through all the freedom, through all the dreaming of skating. I'm now an early retiree and have nothing. For me, it is therefore sometimes difficult to motivate others to give themselves completely to skating. I rather try to give the tip that you should do something else on the side that keeps going when skating is no longer possible. You should always ride on two tracks.

So the early days of skating went pretty well. In 1993, however, the narrow skateboards came out, and nobody wanted to ride them. The first hype was now over, after in 1992 even the last guy on his farm has has such a wide board. But those were really the last stragglers who jumped on the trend at the last second. But then they stopped again right away. And all the skaters you knew before didn't exist anymore. There were new boards, but no more skaters. Then I bought a board from Toy Machine in Gießen, which had pictures of animal testing on it. Hard shape, actually. And then I rode around in my village. Of course, Oli saw that and wanted to ride it and did three or four tricks with it. Oli then said, I'll borrow it for the class trip and he took it with him to Holland for two weeks. And when he came back, he could do twenty flip tricks or so. Really cool. And he infected everyone with it. Everybody in his class wanted to have one of those boards. That was 93/94 and in the course of this, a skater from Nidda came along, there was suddenly this Nidda Connection, and we always went to Nidda. There were skaters who already skated really well, Jono, Meckes and so on, and they also knew the skaters from Florstadt, Tratberger and Michel Lang. They knew skaters from the Frankfurt Hauptwache. So we came to the Frankfurt Hauptwache to skate, and the Frankfurt skaters came to us in Nidda to skate with us in the schoolyard. That's how it was back then. It was super cool that it developed over such long distances.

Totally. Really bad. 5 or 6 years ago I had a blatant flashback. I don't drink anything anymore, and I don't drive a car since 2007. But then I had drunk, and then had such a crass dream in which I drove my car from spot to spot. I dream about skating in certain places quite often. But in this particular dream, I was really, like you just described, going from place to place, drinking, meeting people, and then I was back at another place. This typical back and forth from that time. That was really nice.

Anyway, through this whole connection Frankfurt-Nidda that was 95-98, through all the back and forth, the contacts have become more and more, and also bigger. In 1997 I met Dave. And he had an American contract with Split. The halfpipe world champion at that time also rode for them. So we were able to register everywhere, at all kinds of contests. And I think Dave thought I was a good rider and told me to come along. In 1997 we were at a European Championship, we drove there with Michel Lang, in Brückenpracht, it could also be that these were the German Championships. And in 2000 we went to Switzerland with Dave for the preparations for the World Championships, and that was only possible because he had registered us via Split. That was top. In 2002 Sascha (owner of Lifestyle/Skateland in Friedberg) took us to the preparation for the world championship, and we skated with all the Americans. That was the superhype. Suddenly you were standing on a surface with all the Yanks, who you only knew from skate videos or as characters from the Tony Hawk video game, and skated with them.

And that was so exciting, and when I came home and went to our skate park, I felt like a superstar. I also moved in a completely different way. Skating had also changed, I tried a lot more blatant things. That really influenced me, and I really wanted to achieve and create more in that area. In 2000, I think Chris Hunter was in Friedberg/Bad Nauheim. Unfortunately I can't tell you that much about him. But I liked him a lot. I think he and Arlo resemble each other a little bit, such a nice, chilled out way. You wouldn't have thought that he was a soldier.

Fact. That was always a flash for Americans when they came here to the countryside. We also had a real half-timbered house, and Chris found it all so beautifully overgrown and green. And then we were standing in my room and I had a video recorder with NTSC and had the original Ami VHS tapes with The Simpsons on it. So I thought, okay, I'm going to put one of these in, and I think he was pretty flashed. That impressed him. We also went to the ice rink in Bad Nauheim and skated there.

They had built a huge park in there.

That's right, there were ramps in there.

I don't know. There was a contest in there once. I skated there with Chris. That was really funny. And what I forgot, he once saw a shelf in my room. I used to build shelves out of old wooden boards that were left over in our carpentry shop. And I had built one suitable for VHS tapes and DVDs. Were there already DVD's? Yes, yes. And he saw that and thought it was super cool. It was milled on the sides. These were leftover boards from a balcony screen, which were milled neatly, nicely done, painted brown wood-like. And he saw it at my place and said, I'd like to have one like that. I built him one and brought it to him. He then hung it up at his place, in the army, in his little room. And I think a lot of people came by and wanted a shelf like that, too. That was nice. Cool compliment in any case.

Exactly, Frankfurt was the thing. We were in Franfkurt so from 94, maybe earlier, maybe 93. Until 98, Frankfurt Hauptwache was definitely the thing. There were also frequent demos with American skaters on the Hauptwache.

99 was an audio demo in the skate hall in Frankfurt Dörnigheim. There was also Tony Hawk. And when they unlocked the hall, there were only ten people from the hall, and me, and another kid, and Mark Lange was there with me. But unfortunately he is no longer alive. There were really only so good ten people. The end of the story was that I stood alone with Tony Hawk on the street surface and skated with him. He had his two kids with him. But I didn't go to him or anything, I just thought, so, he's riding here now too. And we just rolled together. That pushed me hard. The Amis came over here and had a huge influence on us with their demos. And the skate videos. We really watched the skate videos every day. There you heard new music, saw clothes and styles. That had a huge influence on us.

Sure. There were a lot of things. We jumped around a lot in the quarry, with BMX bikes and bicycles. Then we also did war maneuvers there. We had all the clothes from the army. The stuff was lying around everywhere in the forest. Bulletproof vests and so on. You always found something like that. Until we were 13 or 14, we still did these army exercises, where Nies was still with us and Schenk, who was always a good buddy of Nies.

Exactly, Nies got us into this a bit. He didn't ride a skateboard. He trained the others (as a child) in hand-to-hand combat in the quarry and made them eat grass. And he didn't get me. But he talked to me, and I was wearing a full army suit and Steve Caballero's olive green Vans, Half Cabs.

Yes, exactly, and when Nies saw the shoes, he said, you're kidding, they're Half Cabs. He thought they were super cool. And Oli was my neighbor at the time, and Oli always had lots of catalogs of all kinds of shit, and he would always come over and we would leaf through the catalogs. And that was then once toys...I was also totally influenced by He-Man and Star Wars, and Schenk had an US Army cavalry catalog and then has always ordered in the USA, the stuff came in giant packages.

And we also went to all the stores around here. I was really badly American-influenced in the nineties. This German village life, with disco parties and tent disco, I have actually hardly experienced, or soccer. I was also on disco parties, but hung out there in the corner with the skaters and punk rockers, or just people who have made their own life. In the nineties, worlds really collided, the typical disco night guys came and said, we don't want a Helly Hansen jacket here on the disco night, and they also provoked fights. There was once a mass brawl with hundreds of people in Borsdorf. The Gabba people jumped into it like a pogo. In the meantime, we've all become friendly again.

Rather the latter, also always connected with the idea of being able to compete there myself. My dream would have been to participate in contest in the USA , to skate with people from there, that had always been my dream. But that never worked out.

Exactly, I could never afford it, never had the money. That was a pity.

But the Americans I've met over the years have always offered me to come along. They all wanted to take me with them, said, hey, come with me, marry my cousin or sister or whoever, you can definitely stay over there. I really believe that I would have liked it, I thought skating was so cool, and that's where it all started. But I have my home base here, my family is here. And sometimes I feel much more comfortable here in the small nature than in such a huge city. I stayed here because of my parents, my mother and our pets, also because of some buddies I had at that time. I always thought, I can't leave here.

In 2004 I was in Wiesbaden a lot. I don't even remember how that came about. Oh yes, in 2003 there was a contest in Mainz where I met a skater who was in the army in Wiesbaden. His name was Brian, the skater. And with Brian it was like this: I don't know if he really had a skate store, but anyway he told me that and said I should ride for him. But I think in reality it was about having someone to party with. I didn't really care, I just wanted someone to skate with and do some shit with. In 2004, I fully understood what the lifestyle was like (in the US Army, editor's note). When you drive in, your car is completely checked, even with a scanner, because of bombs and stuff.

Exactly. Brian also said that had been the reason for him to get enrolled. The others said the same thing.

And yes, they also stationed me with them, so to speak. They often hid me in the barracks at night. During the day, when they checked my room, I had to hide under the bed and wasn't allowed to make a sound. When the check was over and I was left alone in the room, I always looked out of the window and watched the others doing their army exercises. And then I would chill inside and watch DVDs.

I don't know if this is relevant for you now, but in 2004 I hung out there in Wiesbaden. I realized that the war wasn't really about 9/11, but about oil reserves, that it was actually other things that they were fighting over. And I really had contact with a lot of people there, celebrated with them, barbecued, partied, and they smoked my Kawumm. And the downside is that almost all of them died. They all died in the war. That hit me hard. And in 2006/2007, I decided that I had to change something. I just left my car and didn't drive, because I knew that for every liter I consumed, people were dying.

I don't drive a car since then, but I never dared to speak that out loud. Because other people think you have a quirk, according to the motto; are you stupid or what?

I don't know, he definitely lived intensively, but that was the case with all the soldiers. They always lived as if it were their last day. And every day they wanted to experience something really bad. And then Brian also started to make music. He had everything from the Misfits. The entire apartment was black and white. I got him some rare records, limited editions, and he was really happy about them. He was also at a concert in 2004.

In Brian's case, he talked to his father on the phone, and he said to him, come back, this is paradise, here in the U.S. there are all kinds of women, Chinese, Turkish, French, German. Brian also had a girlfriend here, but he screwed that up. The Americans have real problems with relationships here, because they are only here for such a short time. They can already start something meaningless, but they just can't be faithful, they feel the time in Germany as a time of absolute freedom, where they just live it up, and then run away again. Some of them stay. But even they often don't make it, and after ten years or so, they reverse their decision and go back to their old life.

With me and Brian, things just drifted apart. The interests shifted. Brian then specialized in porn production. The last time we met, there was his girlfriend, another friend and his girlfriend, well, we grew apart, that was just not my thing, not my world. Then I also noticed that Brian always does what is hip at the moment, hipster-like. There are always a lot of people who just follow trends. I've always stayed true to my thing, skateboarding. That's always been the most important thing to me.