Once you’re over the border, you enter the city, which is a bustling business district with shops and people everywhere. A couple of blocks down is the Shenzhen stock market and a cluster of tall skyscrapers, the tallest one is a gigantic green structure topped with two large cylinders with antennas. Many of the buildings in Shenzhen are finished with a greenish mirror coating that supposedly reflects the sun’s rays well, but give the building’s a strange plastic look.

The city is spread out quite a bit, around a sort of bay, with downtownish skyscraper clusters poping-up in different areas. One district, Futian, is a bit newer and is a civic and cultural center of town. The city hall is a giant wavy sunhat looking supported by primary colored blocks. SHenzhen is an entrepreneurial city with industries of all sorts, from computers to furniture and what not.

One area of town, the Dafen Oil Painting, which houses about 10,000 oil painters turn out copies of Rembrants and Van Goghs, portraits of Obama and Mao and some original work too. It is said that this village accounts for 60% of all oil paintings being made in the world today.

After looking back down admiring the way that you just came you walk right into an old school plateau of Zagreb. The centerpiece is a large church overlooking the square with an impressively tilled roof in the pattern of a giant birdlike creature and the Croatian colors. Filled with cobblestones, small alleys and streets lead back up into the hills.

Continuing on the way up, there are pockets of neighborhoods spread out through the valleys with pop-up supermarkets and Laundromats spotted around as each neighborhood eventually turn into long roads that singularly climb further up the mountain. At a certain point up the way, eventually, these couple of of long roads connect at a small leveling up in the hills. Some shops and a couple of churches seem as a sort of halfway camp before you can climb up some twisty paths to the summit.

The old Hanseatic port city of Hamburg lies in Northern Germany near the border of Denmark. A free city-state for much of its existence, Hamburg was once one of the largest ports in the world, but eventually struggled during the cold war because of its proximity to East Germany.

In the center of town is the old warehouse district, which is a free zone and exempt from customs and duties. It is now being redeveloped into modern complexes which intermingle with the refurbished old brick warehouses that line the canals. A short distance away is the center of downtown Hamburg proper. In front of City Hall, there is a square that leads down some stairs to the water, which connects to the ‘Alster’, two artificial lakes that were created from the damming of the Elbe river.

It is said that Hamburg has more bridges than Amsterdam or Venice, with canals intersecting the city through stately brick buildings, shopping malls, and a metro that weaves throughout the city. On the main banks of the Elbe river is the cities passenger docks, where cruise liners and tourist boats arrive to pick up and drop people off.

The other side of the river is lined with shipping cranes, which handle containers all day long. There are a few parks looking over the river, where you can take part in one of the cities favorite pass times of having a nice cold German beer while watching the goods roll in and out.

I stayed in a resort city about an hour outside of Antalya in a town called Side, where they have an ancient Roman street with ruins on one side and shops that sell counterfeit Adidas and Ed Hardy gear on the other side. I went to Antalya most of the days on the bus, It took me a little while to figure out the system, but once I got it, I quite liked it. They don’t really have bus stops over there, cuz I couldn’t find any when I started out that first day. But I learned that you just got to look at the signs on the busses going by and then just hail them down like a taxi. By the last day I was flowing and I had some of the drivers honk and pull me up to the next bus for the transfer.

The city of Antalya seemed to have two different parts, the outside part with its large avenues and apartment complexs and then when you cross over the large thoroughfare that circles the center, there was the old town that was nestled on the side of a hill cove surrounding a marina with many boats and yachts. The old town was a labyrinth of small streets and stairways and I explored the town all the way down to the marina and then down the coast a little bit where there were some fancy resorts and clubs perched on the top of some cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. At one point I stopped at a place that had a sign in english in the front advertising lattes. I go in and it turns out that it was some sort of christian missionary place with americans working inside. It was all cool until I got the latte and then said to the guy ” man, it’s fucking hot outside”, at which point he kinda gave ma a scowl and I then got a cold shoulder from the others. Good thing that ain’t the only place in Antalya that got coffee.

I flew to Riga from Dusseldorf with my homie DJ Marcus, who was on a trip to Europe from San Francisco. We got a deal with Baltic Air that got us some free tickets to the Positvious festival, featuring Moby and Sinead O’conner. The only problem was that the festival was a hour outside of town and we couldn’t figure out how to get there with public transportation. After staying in town for a couple of days, we finally decided to hire someone to drive us out there. The dude was a nice enough fellow, but it seemed that everywhere we stopped to on the way to the festival we got the cold shoulder and when we got to Positivous, they refused to let the dude in with us. I guess it turns out that the guy was Russian and after WWII, Russia repopulated the city of Riga with Russians. There is about a 40% Russian population and there is a lot of animosity from the Latvians towards them. In this world you get judged by the company that you keep.

After DJ Marcus took off early, I stayed in town for another week and explored the city with my camera as much as I could. The city has a small old medieval center that sits right on the banks of the Daugava river and extends out to some wooded areas spotted with communist era apartment buildings. It was a bit rough skating through the center of town as all the streets are made with large cobblestone bricks, but gets easier the more you get out of town, even though the pavement isn’t the most up-kept around. One day when I was taking pictures on one of the main bridges, I noticed through the lens a couple that was looking up at me and pointing. It turns out it was my friend of mine from Amsterdam and his girlfriend on a trip to some of the Baltic countries. Seeing him in Riga was a trip and it shows that it can be small world indeed.

While in Copenhagen, I must have been pretty lucky, because it was warm and sunny the whole time I was there. I could imagine it not always being the case, as it is situated in Northern Europe and surrounded by water, like Amsterdam. I would start the days out on the skateboard, exploring the center and then swinging my friends architecture office in Norrebro for a quick bit or some coffee and to get some suggestions on where to go explore in the city. I covered a lot of ground that week, checking out the old fortifications of Kasstellet, going by the Carlsburg Brewery with the giant arches made with carved out Elephants, cruising by the Grundtvig’s Church, which is made out of bricks and then, at the end of the day I would usually head down to Christiania to get some smoke and chill at the outdoor cafe there.

I only planned to stay in Copenhagen for the weekend and a couple of days after, but I learned that the CPH pro skateboarding competition was happening the following weekend. So I bought another train ticket back to Amsterdam for after the weekend and stayed for the contest. I ran into some old skateboarding friends who were in the contest and chilled at the after parties, where they had a whole pig barbecue and the ring of fire jump ramp competition. I also got a chance to experience the longest day of the year in Denmark with some friends, where they have the burning of the witch. We chilled in Christiania with a barbecue, some beers and the fire. I had quite a nice time over there in the CPH and that town is a special place for me.

The city of Berlin has had an interesting, to say the least, history in the 20th century. It was the capital of the Prussian empire until its fall at the end of World War I, then it saw the rise of the nazi’s, where grandiose civic designs were constructed to build a capital for their global empire, until their defeat in World War II. Post war Berlin was a city split in two, with West Berlin controlled by America, Britain and France, lying within the Russian controlled East Germany and surrounded by the Berlin Wall. 1989 saw the reunification of east and west Germany, the wall was torn down and the city was once again one and eventually regaining its status as the capital.

There is a subtle monument left to remember the wall – a line of bricks, two rows wide, has been inlaid into the ground and throughout the city where the wall once stood. You can see the line quite distinctly right next to the Brandenburg Gate as it passes by, but as I skated through town and explored some of the districts outside the center, you come across these bricks in all sorts of places. Its interesting to see at these locations how the city is building itself back together. The wall was a nowheres land for about 50 years, where you could get shot on site for just approaching it. In some areas, the spaces are empty and you can still feel the distance between east and west. Other areas are completely rebuilt and the line of bricks only represent an ever increasing distant past.

I went to Paris this time on a short weekend trip with my friends, Francoise, Caro and Wilmie on the train. Francoise was having a birthday party there at her friend ” ” house and the theme of the party was ” “, which to this day I’m not quite sure what it means, but I ended up wearing a small plastic chicken on my head all night.

I started one of my journeys in Paris, by taking the subway out to La Defense, which is a bit out of the center, where the French built their ultra modern skyscraper spread of an out-of-town downtown. The center piece of the complex is a humungous building shaped like the outline of a square. I guess it is suppose to be an arch, because it lines up with the Arch de Triomphe and lies at the end point of the grand Champs d’Elysee. Which is the way I ended up going from there. Once I got past the modern area, you cross the river Seine at a couple of points as it winds its way a bit out there. I quickly came to the famous Arch, snapped a couple of shots for myself and a couple of tourists that were hanging out there, then continued on with a short detour to check out the Eiffel Tower. Then I made my way back to the main road, which I passed through the Place de la Concorde, with its grandiose buildings and large open area where I could imagine there were quite a few victory rallies back in the day. The I moved on by the museum area that then connects back up with the river, which I followed down passed the Louvre and ended the days trip near the Quatier Latin and Notre Dame. which lies on a small island in the middle of the Seine in the middle of town. I found it quite an interesting route as I started out from the modern La Defense area, passing through the old arch and ending in the center of town, it was like taking a trip from modern Paris through the different eras back in time.

While I was in Lisbon, Portugal taking pictures, I meet a local rapper named Jazzy Jay during a break I took at a local sandwich shop. We got to talking and he told me he was shooting a video the next day for his track “Street Brothers” and he needed somebody to chase him around the city on a skateboard wearing an alien mask for the video. I was like “cool, let’s do this” and I got his number and made an appointment for the next morning.

We hooked up the next day near the sandwich shop that we met and then took a bus to a house a bit out of town and linked up with two other dudes that were gonna be filming. It was a bright sunny day and we started filming at a train station near the dudes house which was a bit out of town. The video started out with me creeping behind Jazzy Jay on foot, while he was just walking down the street, bumping his track on some headphones, oblivious to the alien creeping behind him. Next, we went underground on the subway and did a bit of filming until the security kicked us out. The plot-line of the video developed so that Jazzy Jay begins to notice that he is being followed and starts to run, at which point I jump on a skateboard and ride after him.

Lisbon is a picturesque old european city and we filmed scenes all over town – in old alleyways, in the downtown marketplace and in some local parks. The dudes were chill and relaxed, one of the guys did most of the filming, while the other one assisted and rolled joints. We finished up the filming at the Praca do Comercio in the center of lisbon as the sun was going down. In the video, I finally catch up to Jay in the middle of the plaza, he turns around, the mask comes off and he discovers that it was he himself that was chasing him the whole time, or that was the idea at least.

It wasn’t the greatest time to be in Stockholm, when I went there, because it was Midsummer. Which is the longest day of the year and can be quite long up there in the northern countries. Apparently, most of the people of Stockholm go to their family’s summer cabin or retreats and the city was empty and abandoned. Which wasn’t too bad as it left the streets and sidewalks of the city empty for me to roam around as I pleased and take pictures.