maandag, november 28, 2005

Week 13: Dusseldorf, Germany – 24 hours in Germany

I left off planning on heading to Germany to skate Dietsches Pool, a wooden 'pool replica' bowl he built almost completely by himself over a 6 week period. So I started my German adventure at 12:58 in the early afternoon from Horst, Holland. I skated down the street to the bus stop where I waited for about 20 minutes. No bus came. The third person I asked actually answered me, and told me what, “De Idiot van Hey, er is geen bus die bij deze bushalte ophoudt” translated to in English. Yup, no bus. So I skated through the town following signs to Venlo, the border town in Holland where you can take the train to Germany. After some stuggle and miscommunication, I found out there was a train from Horst that could take me to Venlo. I skated about 5 kilometers to the train station, not without incident. I was about to skate into the street (smoother surface) but realized the bike lane was too small and the road too fast with cars. I stopped, and slipped, and fell on my ass hitting my semi-broken thumb (before I even got to the bowl) and my legs dangled in the street as my board shot out. Screeeeeeeching of brakes, and a few honks later, I was back on my way. I arrived to the train station in about 25 minutes, and waited 50 minutes. I borded the train and got to Venlo. Switched trains to Mönchengladbach which I had to transfer again to Dusseldorf. This 1.5 hour estimated trip was already into hour 4! So I am finally on the train to Mönchengladbach, and the train stops. Murmers in German let me know something was wrong. Bomb threat at Mönchengladbach. Great. Bin Ladin, or old WWII bombs were the guesses from the unamused germans trying to get home. And me, I had Dietsches and Gerd Rieger (contributor to Concussion #27 with Basque skate article) waiting for me in Burger King. So, I took the bus to Mönchengladbach, and when I arrived, the station still existed. No bomb: shocking! I took the train after 25 minutes and finally arrived in Dusseldorf, met Gerd and Dietsches at Burger King (where they had waited for 2 hours), and proceeded to the pipe warehouse where the bowl was situated. The bowl was super fun, bigger than I thought, complete with a death box, pool tiles, and stairs. I skated with about 6 other Germans, who took turns skating and huddling around a home made gas heater because it was less that 0 degrees celsius in the pipe factory (apparently the metal pipes hold in the cold making it colder than outside). But after some runs in the bowl I quickly warmed up and although I slammed at the end of almost every run, I had a blast. I stayed the night at Dietsches house and we watched pool skating videos of Fresno and other California pools and after almost feeling homesick seeing some of my friends on a German TV, I called it a night, on my custom modified cushion bed on the floor. The next morning I headed on back to Horst, making it within 2.5 hours, returning home to my bewilderment at 12:58, exactly to the minute, 24 hours after I left. Check out the 1 minute quicktime video of me and Dietsches skating his bowl:

Dietsches Bowl

or come and test it out for yourself! – Jonny Haywire


Gerd Rieger - sweeper - Dietsches Bowl



Dietsches over the stairs

1 Comments:

Blogger Sean Hawk said...

Sick!! I wonder why Dietsches opted to make it out of wood. Was it cheaper? Easier to maintain? A better skate? Whatever the case, he did a masterful job. Now I'm jonesing to check it out. :)

december 14, 2005 12:38 a.m.  

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