Berlin, Copenhagen, and a Few Days in Amsterdam

Posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006 by Rob

By Rob Meronek

We’re staying in the extra touristy part of Amsterdam. So it’s not so cool to travel half way around the world and still see large crews of dumb jocks like you’re still in America. Outside of that, the part of Amsterdam I’ve seen is pretty much like Disney World with sketchy hookers and drugs. There are some amazing buildings to check out, though. Every now and then there’s a decent skate spot, but there’s so much brick here most of them are unskatable. I’ve only seen a small part of each of these cities we’ve traveled to, but so far Prague has been the best. They have the nicest people, best chill spots, good skate spots, a retarded amount of hot girls, no fat people, and great beer and food. Everything’s really cheap, too. There are no boob jobs there and girls are looking extra nice without make up. Tomorrow is practice all day at the Park, then the Qualifiers are on Saturday. The Semi-Finals and Finals are on Sunday. Volcom has also put up 15,000 Euros in cash for this event. Watch for more photos later. Hopefully more of them will be skating this time.

I've never seen this one before. Chris Gregson - shuv it tweaker

The Hale Family is here. This is Cody Hale nollie 360 flipping up one of the step-ups in the Park

Adam Dyet pulled the classic move when traveling. Spending all your per diem at the beginning of the trip. Lucky there's a 15,000 Euro prize purse for this one. Hans from Volcom has it in cash ready to pass out. This is a kickflip frontside pivot

Jason Rothmeyer is here to judge the event. This is a kickflip back tail

Jason Rothmeyer - kickflip pivot fakie

This is a skate park in Copenhagen that's under construction. They let us skate and have beers late night. We had a fun time in here

Vert is more popular in Europe it seems. This is at that same park under construction in Copenhagen

The buildings and architecture in Copenhagen are just as amazing as in Prague

A small sample of the view out the window of the train from Prague to Berlin

A pool built into a river in Berlin. It was freezing, but that didn't stop Schaefer and Preston from enduring some shrinkage

Our friend Anne was our tour guide for Berlin. She took us to the extra punk rock bars and places tourists normally don't end up. That was a nice change of pace

One of the best meals in Berlin was from this street vendor cooking chicken Boston Market style. It was just a few bucks for a great meal here

Somehow we ended up in some park that was build for the Turkish people. They tried to make it all authentic and use masonry and rock from Turkey, but the winters in Berlin destroyed the place. See those girls in the background, they don't know it, but they're about to be our new friends and tour guides for the night

They roll their own cigarettes and think it's funny when we tourists bust our our maps of the city. That's Lisa on the left and Suzanna on the right. They both spoke some pretty decent English with a nice German flavor added in

When I told Lisa about the awesome chicken dinner I just had, she laughed and called it "gas station chicken." I guess she was saying my meal was ghetto. So, she took us to this Arabian place that served this thing up - it sucked. I wasn't even sure it was chicken

After being shocked that I didn't like it, Lisa asked for a bite. She then proceeded to completely mow it down with full finger licking

I borrowed Lisa's bike and left the crew behind for a bit. I got totally lost but found some really cool stuff all around Berlin. This was some plaza that had a ton of teddy bears going around it with some crazy looking buildings

Damn, all I had was a bike and no skateboard at this random Berlin spot I found

Some fake D3's on some random chick that sat next to us on the streets of Berlin for a few beers

This is Alex, an obnoxious Berlin drunk who turned out to be pretty cool. He was telling us about his experience traveling to the US. He said when he told the Customs Officer that he was from Berlin, the Officer said, "Ya'll got refrigerators there?" So he's got a real ignorant impression of Americans. He still bought us lots of beers, though. Check that TSOL shirt

In every city we've been in, bikes are the main mode of transportation. This is in Amsterdam - an Amsterdam family truckster

Stump hopping in Amsterdam. Everyone made it the entire length except me. I can't even walk on train tracks

Something's smeared on the chill cam lens. That's Ryan Clements, Adam Dyet, Kyle Berard, Preston Maigetter, Brian Schaefer, and Rob Meronek on our Amsterdam bikes at some random vert ramp we ran into

Make sure to eat your veggies when in Amsterdam. 15 minutes after this photo was taken, Schaefer was freaking out pretty bad, but laughing the whole time