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Cycling in Berlin

June 13th 2018

By Fotostrasse

Like every other city, Berlin has problems when it comes to adapting to a world where cars and bikes live together. And it doesn’t stop there. The one thing that scares me the most about cycling in Berlin are other people on bikes. And there are a lot of them. For every 10 people in Berlin, there are 7 bikes and there are around 500,000 daily bike rides through the city. This accounts for a lot of unprepared people on the road which can be scary from time to time.

At first, I thought Berlin wasn’t a classic cycling city. I mean that because Berlin has a public transport system that works really well. So, why would you buy a bike in the german capital? I will tell you why.

First, Berlin is almost completely flat which means that you don’t need a bike with gears. And that is amazing. I come from Belo Horizonte, a city in the middle of the Brazilian mountains, where cycling is pretty hard. Berlin is as close as I can get to heaven. At least when it comes to how flat it is.

Second, most apartments and offices here have places for storing your bike. Which means that it is really easy to park your bike anywhere in Berlin. You don’t need to spend some time searching for a place for your bike, there is a lot of places everywhere.

Third, the streets are wide and the drivers expect you to be there, most of the times. We live in Neukölln and Karl Marx Strasse is a great place to bike with wide lanes everywhere. But it is not even wide when you compare to the streets of East Berlin. Karl Marx Allee is so wide that tanks could drive down on both sides and you would still have space for you bike. That is amazing!