Raphos, how are you bud? Tell us a little about yourself?
Hey! I’m good man, just waking up and the summer is coming to Berlin! I'm turning 31 this year, moved to Berlin with my girlfriend nearly a year ago.
You’ve got German heritage and are currently living in Berlin, how did that come about and how do you find it over there?
Yeah my mum is German and her whole family lives in Germany, the southern part to be precise. Well I met my girlfriend (Didi) over here a few years ago while I was traveling around Europe. She ended up coming to Australia for close to a year, then her visa was running up in Australia. So we had the hard decision to either stay there or come to Germany if we wanted to stay together. Australia has tough and expensive visa laws, but I got a German passport so we decided to move to Berlin for a while and see how that goes. So far I'm really enjoying it. Not the winter haha. That sucked big time but summer is something different! The city is crazy, there is always something fun to do here riding and party wise!
How's riding been in that Berlin winter? And have you put any beers in the oven lately?
You can pretty much forget about riding here in winter as it's bitterly cold and there is a massive lack of indoor parks, for a capital city of a country like Germany. There is one indoor park that is super sick and its only 10 min from my place, but the pricks don't let BMX riders in, only on a Saturday night mixed with skaters for like four hours I think.
Haha nah, I keep my beers cold, but I did catch up with Vince when I was Innsbruck last week, beer bong champ!
Shooting for this interview seemed a little hard with battling the shitty cold weather, what was the process like, anything interesting happen worth mentioning?
Yeah when we were talking about this interview, it was super fucken cold. We had -10°C for two weeks then it just sat at round -5°C to 5°C for months. Every now and then it would be sunny and over 0 degrees so we would meet up for a quick ride some where, then off to a coffee shop for coffee and cake haha I've never worn so many layers, double socks and a scarves before while riding, I was not prepared for it at all. I can’t think of any interesting stories but we did a lot of exploring instead of going to the well known spots. We would get on the train and just go to the outskirts of Berlin and see what we could find. There are some crazy spots out there that make you scratch your head and there is always some really fucked up people about so that keeps it interesting too.