My name is Lena, I’ll be turning 18 in 2 days, I live in Kirchanschöring which is a small village in Bavaria, the redneck area of Germany. The only real advantage that this region has is damn good beer.
Well happy birthday! German rednecks eh, how are those compared to the American counterparts?I don’t really know haha, I’ve never seen American rednecks but basically they’re fat, speak in a weird accent, drink beer all day and all night, hate everyone who comes from another part of Germany and a huge part is also pretty racist in general, but you might like the girls traditional clothing.
That sounds exactly like our rednecks haha, guess they stay the same regardless of where you go. So I know German alcohol laws are pretty lenient, what’s the culture like there in regards to alcohol? Is it glamorized a lot like it is here, or is it more laid back?Hmm.. depends. Beer is holy in Bavaria. If you drink beer nobody thinks about it like drinking alcohol. It’s much rather seen as staple. Bavarians call beer ‘flüssiges brot’ which means liquid bread haha, and well we drink it as often as we eat bread if not more often. BUT if you drink liquor or wine in the morning or afternoon everyone thinks about you as an alcoholic plus as ‘saupreiß’ which is an insult for Prussians. Most Bavarian people are narrow-minded but funny.
Funny I’ve referred to beer as liquid bread as well. I’ve always wanted to visit Germany, if anyone is looking to visit, what are some places you would recommend to really take it in?Haha yeah I mean it IS liquid bread for the most part. Hmm places I’d recommend. There are a lot of nice skate spots in Cologne but the beer (Kölsch) there sucks.. It’s like drinking water.. I once literally drank 2.5 liters of kölsch and didn’t feel anything. Munich has good beer but the people there are mostly assholes and snobs (at least everyone i know from Munich is) so I wouldn’t recommend visiting Munich. I’d say Cologne, Berlin, maybe also Hamburg.
Cool. So, how long have you been skating, and what got you into it?Altogether I’ve been skating for almost 4 years. There were different circumstances that led to skateboarding becoming a part of my life but first of all, watching my brother and his friends skating when I was about 10 years old whetted my interest. The way they moved and balanced fascinated me because I didn’t understand how they did it. Back then I wanted my brother to show me how to do it but he was 14 and, as you can tell, really not interested in doing anything with his little sister. Then I kinda forgot about skating cause he quit and I never really had contact to any skaters, plus I hit puberty so I became interested in other things. The summer I turned 13 I found my brother’s old board and from that day on I went skating 7 days a week for hours but I never wanted anybody to watch me cause I wasn’t self-confident at all and I was afraid of anybody making fun of me. I never went to a skate park and no one except for my family even knew that I skated. I skated for about 3 years and stopped again in 2010.I started off again last summer. Damn sorry for this being so long .
Haha, length doesn’t matter, that was an interesting answer! Have you overcame your self consciousness about your skating over time?Yes, definitely, at least to a great extent, but sometimes it still feels weird to go to the park cause the minute I arrive everyone there starts to look at what I’m doing. I guess it’s just that I’m the only girl here that ever came to a skatepark for another reason than flirting with the guys but now that I know most of the guys there it doesn’t bother me anymore when some of the others stare at me all the time. Plus I’m not at the park that often anyways.
That’s good, always nice to see women shred. Do you have any styles of skating your prefer? Any tricks that are favorites to do?At the moment.. or since I started off again last year I’m mostly into ledges and I like bombing hills. One of the other great things about Bavaria is the amount of hills we have. I guess I prefer those cause I really need speed, and that rush of adrenaline I get when skating a steep, high hill is just priceless. But whenever I find another nice spot, I try to skate it though most of my flip tricks still look a bit questionable to everyone who knows a bit about how they actually should look But I mean, I don’t wanna be sponsored or one of the best. Of course I want to become as good as I can get but I do it for the fun of skating and not for any other reasons. I’d love to break the 14 year old kids asking you if you’re sponsored whenever they see you skating their noses. Back when my brother started, the first question one asked another was whether they were able to ollie. I mean what the hell happened to the chilled part of skateboarding?
Don’t worry that happens a lot here as well, but you have a good outlook on skating so kudos for that. Is the skating scene pretty big in Bavaria, or is it still developing?Hmmm.. I’d say still developing though there are a lot of skaters. It’s just that our government really doesn’t give a fuck about skaters. When anyone from a soccer team asks a council worker if it’d be possible to build a new soccer field they’ll most likely get it within 2 or 3 years. When we ask for a new halfpipe, it’s “yea well.. we’ll see what we can do”, then nothing happens. We build the halfpipe on our own. It’s just that Bavaria is known for it’s great soccer teams and the great winter sport industry but other things like skating, well a lot of young people are interested in it but there aren’t young people in positions where they could decide anything.. so basically all of our parks are shitty and ill thought through because WHEN they build one they don’t ask us what would be important in order to build a skate park anyone really wants to skate.
Damn, I hope they come around some time. Hopefully they’ll see it could be in their interests to help the industry develop more. OK, on to some top 5’s. First one, pro skateboarders.Hmmm…. Daewon Song, Jerry Hsu, Josh Kalis, Rodney Mullen, Andrew Reynolds, and Lem Villemin.
Nice group there. Next, bands.Really only 5? I mean 50 is hard but 5 is heartless.
You can expand on it if you like.Ok, I’ll try to choose the most important ones. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Doors, Radiohead, Sonic Youth (i prefer the older stuff), Nirvana, Libertines/Babyshambles, Velvet Underground, Morphine, Joy Division, The Cure, Pink Floyd, and some singers. John Coltrane, Muddy Waters, and Lou reed
Seems we have similar tastes, yay for Sabbath! Next one, movies.Hmm Burton and Tarantino movies in general (most of them), Control (movie about Ian Curtis’ life), The Fifth Element, Star Wars series, Die Hard I, II,III,IV. Plus you really have a good taste in music then.
Hah thanks. Last one, skate videos.Hmm… it’s hard to choose some.. but Birdhouse – The End, Plan B – Questionable, Powell Peralta – The Search for Animal Chin, Baker 3, Shorty’s – Fulfill the Dream, and Girl – Yeah Right! But I’ve never seen a skate video that I didn’t enjoy watching at all. Ok, wait, I did. My brother once chose to do one, but at least it was funny. It looked like his friend filmed it with one of the first mobiles that had a cam.
Nice! Also agree on the last part, most skate videos are good nowadays(except for your brother’s I take it, and random youtube fails). I see you’re going to university in Germany, what are you going for?Not university yet. I’m gonna do my abitur 2014 which is.. umm.. abitur is.. like.. graduation? maybe? After abitur I’ll be allowed to study somewhere, and then I guess I want to study something like linguistics. I love languages and I’m really interested in the development of languages, plus I’d love to learn to speak and write really old languages like Sanskrit.
Ah I see. That seems interesting, especially older languages like you said. So aside from skating, are there other hobbies you enjoy?I like drawing and painting, playing the guitar, singing, I dance, read and write a lot. I do several sports like slacklining (but I’m bad as fuck at it), swimming, ice hockey, snowboarding (but just sometimes), diving (I’m going to get my open water diver license soon totally stoked)… I love festivals, I used to be into photography but I don’t have a cam anymore and I can’t afford a new one.. and I’d love to do base jumping but atm I couldn’t even afford a parachute jump.. so that has to wait. I don’t really enjoy partying at least not going to clubs. I prefer just having a camp fire by the lake (by the lake? sounds wrong.. you know what i mean), drinking a bit, laughing, playing guitar.
Damn, that’s quite a lot! I’d love to start diving myself but that will have to wait haha. So to wrap things up, any shout outs you’d like to give?I definitely wana give shout outs to .MartyRules, Stookie, Wayfarer, Gunz, WhiteTrash, Vlad the Conqueror, Liam_King, imnikola, Popwar Pill, Regularchild, and you. I can’t think of more at the moment so anyone I forgot is free to complain about it.
