Berlin by Bike
The strike took an interesting turn today, with the public transportation running on a holiday schedule for the week, in order to take advantage of all the tourists coming to town before Easter. However, other methods of transportation have become absolutely necessary, since the strike is likely to resume after Easter again. Luckily for me, Marlies is letting me use Paula's old bike. Even though I say 'old,' it is still in really good condition and serves me just fine.
Berlin is also a very bike-friendly city. Not only is the city really, really flat (making changing gears or gears at all almost unnecessary] there is an infrastructure of bike paths, bike lanes and bike lights on almost every street in the city. The drivers are also really conscious of the bikers, which definitely makes me feel better about biking on the street, and the pedestrians have a lot of respect for the bikers, almost always getting out of the way on sidewalks. If you want to read more about it, I found an article about Berlin's bike infrastructure.
Since the nearest S-bahn station is about a 15-20 minute walk from my house, the best option that I have is to ride my bike. Sometimes it means I ride my bike to the station and lock it up there or sometimes I even bring it on the train if I think its not going to be too crowded. When I am feeling really ambitious, I just bike all the way to where I am going.
With the help of our student Assistant Luis, who basically bikes everywhere in the city, I found a good way to bike to classes. It takes me about 45 minutes to bike to school, which is the same that it takes with public transportation, but I am obviously getting more of a workout. (After the first day biking I realized I had to bring a shirt to change into once I got to school).
In addition to biking to school, I have biked to the Tiergarten to have a picnic with Annie, the Opera, the Consulate to apply for my new Swedish passport, the Turkish Market, and many other places.
Not only is biking a good form of exercise, it is a great way to see the city. There are so many new places, neighborhoods, stores, etc that I have discovered biking around the city that there is probably no other way that I would have learned about them. On a sunny day biking in Berlin makes me appreciate the city a lot more.
2 comments:
Där ser man! Det finns inget ont som inte har något gott med sig!!!!
Och jag blir verkligen avundsjuk! Det var så jag lärde känna och älska Stockholm i min ungdom. Pappa och jag bodde först ganska nära stan, vid Frescati, då cycklade vi alltid in till stan. Sen bodde vi inne i stan i många år, och då fortsatte vi att cyckla. Särskilt fantastiskt var det på sommaren när det var ljust i stort sett dygnet runt. Då var det också mycket färre bilar i stan eftersom alla åkte ut på landet. Lucky you!
wow that photo in that article is incredible. you're such a lucky place to get to do all this! my dad would be in heaven, he bikes to/from work almost every day (and showers there, just like you found you'd have to change a shirt)
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