Inception- A story inside a story inside a story… about my best friend
I was sitting at dinner the other night here in Germany, and for a second I kinda tripped out. As I looked around the table at my friends, an overwhelming warmth filled my soul, and I asked myself, “How did I end up at this table? In this apartment? With these people?”
I thought about it for a quick second, and then it was all so simple. I was there because of a friend- my best friend, who introduced us ten years ago in 2006.
It was in this little place called (not Muenster, but) Greven at this bar named The Lenox that I was introduced to a guy named Adem. This was the first summer I ever spent in Germany, and Adem, as well as his friends, immediately made me part of their crew. We were a big group of guys, maybe 10 or 11, and with each of them, as in all big circles, we all had or own little relationships- the things that respectively connected us. Well, with Adem and I, we bonded over that mutual friend that we both openly admired.
Every year for the next five summers, I hung out with the same crew, but over time it had dwindled down to about six or so, and Adam was one of the few that stuck around.
So fast forward to last summer, 2016. I hadn’t been to Germany in about four years, and I was back in Greven with my mother at Adem’s mother’s house for dinner. Her name is Mariola and she’s from Poland, which makes her accent so cute, and just like my mother, she is one of the sweetest women I have ever met. Thus, the two had no problem connecting even though they both shared a little pool of words from which they both happily fished. They got along like little school girls. A smile was a universal language in which they were both fluent that night, and for everything they couldn’t understand, Adem and I would translate back and forth.
While they giggled and shared pictures with one another, we went out to the balcony for a smoke to shoot the shit like old buddies when my travels came up. He was like “Dude, What are you doing on the weekend of such and such?” I was like, “I don’t know. I haven’t planned that far ahead yet. Why what’s up?” He said, “I’m going to Poland on a skate tour with the Muenster Titus team. You should come.” At first I thought he was just kinda just halfway laying it out there, but with Adam, he means what he says. So then we were like “Oh! My god. Like totally!” No, jk jk, that’s what our mom’s were like. I was like, “Yeah sure. Let’s do it. You just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”
When traveling, it is very important that you are always in the know and are always prepared. I’m usually not the first and the second is most definitely not my middle name. I flew from Barcelona to Poland to meet Adem and the team. Just so you know, there are two airports in Warsaw, and I flew into the one way, way outside the city. Almost all the money I unknowingly saved on the far-away airport went to the bus ride to the city center. The rest went to the cab fair to the hostel. I did, however, save money on the room that costed close to bread crumbs. The team was still on their way (they were in a tourbus, coming from Germany), and I was hungry and exhausted, so I had some perogies and then took a nap on the bottom bunk closest to the door in a room of 12 people. As soon as the guys arrived I moved my mattress from my room to their room and put it in the middle of the floor. I always wondered what my old roomies, or even the hostel for the matter, wondered when there was an empty bunk with a mattress missing…
(This is a short little article I wrote for a magazine called BrettKollegen, translated from German).
Insert article *
“Tyskie Tour”
Room 81 at the Patchwork Hostel wasn’t much bigger than your parents’ bedroom and stuffed in it were seven stinky dudes, three bunkbeds, a gang of empty beer and vodka bottles, cameras, boards, computers, shoes, and a window from which we took turns smoking out of and watching the nightlife below.
On the first day, after boards were set up, Adam Przybyla, AKA stand-in team manager, spot finder, tour guide, and photographer took us straight to his favorite spot- the liquor store, to get his favorite beer. Tyskie for everyone. Our first skate spot was Grzybowski plaza behind the Kulturpalast Building, which Adam referred to as the “Ghostbusters Building.” (And it really looked like it too). Two seconds after getting there, we got kicked out by the cops, so we headed to the grate gap where Karsten Feyler went straight to it with a textbook nollie heel that set the tone for the trip.
From there Mike Brauer, your favorite skater’s favorite skater, backed him up with a switch flip and switch heel. Once he started, he didn’t stop. He was like a machine gun firing off tricks at each and every spot. Everyone, from time to time, could be found sitting around at the spot and chilling out, but not Brauer. The only time I saw him not pushing around was when he was switching out broken boards.
A major shout out to Lukasz Dzido is in order. We met this Warsaw local on the second day, and he took us around the city from spot to spot. On the third evening, Dzido took us to Warsaw’s most famous spot- Warsaw Uprising Square. The crew sat under the shade of Napolean’s statue, soaking in sweat and with Tyskie in hand as we watched Flo Wester’s get one of the sickest lines of the trip- switch flip up, fakie f/s flip down.
Tom Schulze can skate anything you put in front of him, but on the day we checked out Powisle DIY, we got to see him in his natural element. He had been licking his lips to skate some transition the whole trip, and the bowl in the back corner satisfied his appetite. While the others seshed the huge broke-down building with broken glass everywhere, Schulze murdered the bowl.
But it wasn’t just about skating. No. Every skate trip to Warsaw must have tons of beer, vodka, and girls girls girls. Lucky for us, our hotel was at the the base of the famous Pawilony Square, in which we partied every night, and around the corner from us on Royal Route, the girls with the umbrellas seemed to love us. But maybe that’s because they were strippers trying to lure us into their strip clubs. Well, they might have gotten us in their hands for the night, but they weren’t going to slow the team down for the next day of skating. Only me. I couldn’t wake up the next morning, so the guys left me at the hostel.
At three o’clock the door opens, and it’s the filmer, Christian Bluemle, with the most fucked up face you’ve ever seen. He ate shit while bombing a hill. The dude was a trooper though. He could’ve used his hands instead of his face to save himself, but his hands had more important things to worry about. “I couldn’t protect myself. I had to save the camera,” he told me with a blood-red strawberry filled face. And we can thank him for both that and all the filming he did, because without it, you wouldn’t be able too see how bad this team killed it in Warsaw.
End Article*
I left the team a couple days early so I could go meet my best friend from California in Germany. We stayed in Muenster for a couple days, wreaking the kind havoc you do when your best friend visits you in Europe. Then we went on a trip from Amsterdam to The Hague, up into Sweden and Norway, and then back to Amsterdam. We said goodbye there and I flew to Italy to go say hello to another gang of friends- some old, some new, together alike to witness a beautiful couple get married in the beautiful Italian hills where you could see past the vineyards and down to the orange sun setting over the beautiful blue Mediterranean Sea. My new crew and I wreaked the same kind of havoc along Italian coast for the next ten or so days.
After we finished, I was exhausted both mentally and physically. For the three months prior to this, I had been on-the-go without taking a second’s break. It sounds amazing and it was, don’t get me wrong, I was blessed, but living out of a carry-on bag, in hotels, hostels, and random couches does start to get old. The second I started to get even a little comfortable somewhere, it was off to the airport and on to the next one. If you’ve ever traveled, you have seen that English can get you by, particularly in the northern countries of Europe, but it in the south you’re barely getting by and it gets taxing when you’re never sure if they got your point or you got theirs. In any case, I was ready for a place where I could go get comfortable again, at least for a bit. Back to California was not an option for me and it was too late to re-enroll for school in New York, so that left me with Muenster. It was the closest I could get to home without actually going back across the pond.
For those three months before this, there wasn’t a single night on which I slept by myself. There was always someone right next to me, whether it was in the bed, on the couch, or on the floor. I love each and everyone of those people (besides one), but I needed to be by myself for a while. You know, to recharge the batteries, to chill the fuck out with just me and my own thoughts. To my luck I found a great little Air BnB in the Kuhviertel (Cow quarter) of the Altstadt (oldtown) where I spread out like a starfish in my very own bed for two weeks. In this time, I played around with the idea of staying in Germany for a bit and setting down some roots, even if the tree wasn’t suppose to grow big. I could’ve stayed in that apartment in the Altstadt forever, but that simply wasn’t an option. Not only would it have been too expensive, it was already booked up. And then life kicked in. Sometimes it will amaze you with the little gifts it offers you packaged as friends.
Because when I was in Poland I got to know the filmer. Not real well, but well enough, and we seemed to enjoy each other’s company. And take a guess? On the second to last day in my Air BnB, whom do you think I saw when I went out for a solo skate sesh at the Werke spot. That’s right. None other then Christian Bluemle. After hearing my story/plans, he told me that they had just recently lost a roommate and needed a new one to fill the spot as soon as possible. First, however, we needed to run it by the third roommate, Johannes Riedel, and have a little meet and greet. It went well all around and I moved in few days later.
Those were some great months we had together. I love those guys fuer immer and always. I’ve always been a younger brother, but these two gave me the privilege and fulfilled a dream of being the older brother (who at times is much less mature.) And even though they’re younger, I don’t view them as my lessers. Actually, on the contrary. They’re both so special in their own ways. I learned so much from them, about them, and with them.
So lets come full circle to the other night, which I started off with, as I was back in Germany when I kinda tripped out at the dinner table with a warm soul, asking myself, “How did I end up at this table? In this apartment? With these people?” The simple answer is easy. You can trace it back to that night 11 years ago when I met Adem. Because if I didn’t meet Adem than I wouldn’t have gone to Poland where I wouldn’t have met Bluemle, who, with Riedel, wouldn’t have invited me to be their roommate. But I did, so that is how I answered that question of how I ended up at my old dinner table, in my old apartment, and with my old roommates.
That’s the simple answer, but I prefer the answer in a cosmic sense. I actually owe everything to my best friend that was the first piece in the puzzle and introduced me to Adam. And let me take a second right here to thank you for that as well as everything else.
Do you remember that day we met when I was just 12 years old? I shall never forget it because right away I knew what I had found in you, and I knew that we would never again leave each other’s side. Well, its been 17 years and we’ve never left home without one another, have we? Nope! You’ve been the best travel buddy a guy could ask for. We’ve seen everything from little Gimbte to the crazy streets of Buenos Aires. You’ve been my favorite partner in crime and my closest confidant. You’ve heard secrets that, if not for you, I would’ve taken to my grave. That’s how much I trust you. And I better, because you have seen me do my fair share of some scratch-your-head-kind-of-shit, all while never batting an eye. You’ve seen me laugh, you’ve seen me cry. In the thin, we floated down the streets like fluffy clouds in the sun, and in the thick you kept me pushing on like a rider on the storm. Like, for instance, on that day underneath the Manhattan Bridge when I received the last ever phone call from my father. Remember what he said? You were right there. You always are and I would like to show you my appreciation for that and everything else—the adventures I’ve had with you, all the places you’ve ever taken me, and most importantly, I would like to thank you for being the connection to all those great people.
I wish you could know how much you mean to me. However, in a way it sucks because there is no way, even with all the words in the world, you could ever fully comprehend what I wish you could know. But there is no way, my friend, and I know you won’t take it personal for that is impossible because you are an inanimate object. You are my skateboard.
On the real though, it is true, I do love that thing like a best friend. And it is crazy how that little piece of wood with four wheels has formed my life. In the beginning, my mom used to think it was a bad influence on me. Well not always, but there were times, usually around report card time, when she would ground me from my board because she knew exactly how to strike that chord in my heart. I don’t blame her anymore because my board was, in fact, the reason I barely scraped by in school, but for the lack of what I learned there, it taught me about life on the streets of the world’s many countries. And there’s still so much more and you better believe that we’ll keep on going.
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I would like to thank, first of all, Adem, for having me along on this trip. I would also like to thank Stefan Isbrecht for giving me the opportunity to write the article. And last but not least, I would like to thank Bluemle for allowing me to use all the footage he got when we were in Poland, and allowing me to re-edit it. If you’d like to see the original edit, here it is- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZlqLnCpgrU