Bike Love <3

One of the things I love most about living in Greifswald is being able to bike everywhere. Since biking is such an integral part of my life in Greifswald, I thought I’d write a post about it. 😉 

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Greifswald is relatively small, and it’s usually faster to bike than wait for the bus (there are only three bus lines). So rather than having parking problems, sometimes I have difficulty finding a place to park my bike!

Getting around and living in general is very easy without a car. As is typical in Germany, each neighborhood/area has it’s own small stores, rather than one giant store for the whole city. That means that there are two small grocery stores only a five minute walk away from my apartment (I usually just walk there rather than bike), but if I need anything else, there’s a shopping mall a mere 10 minute bike ride away. The city center is just a 15 minute bike ride in the other direction, and I can get to the beach in 15 minutes from my apartment! There’s a train station that’s just a 20 minute walk away from my apartment, or I can take the bus to the main train station and be there in about 10 minutes. When I’m leaving for a trip, I take the bus rather than ride my bike because bikes tend to get stolen if left out overnight. 😦 (hasn’t happened to me yet…fingers crossed!) 

I bike an average of 20-25 miles a week (!). On top of that, I live on the 5th floor of the apartment building–and there’s no elevator (so let’s just say that my legs are in excellent shape). The city has bike paths everywhere–and usually they are protected bike lanes (the sidewalk is divided in half), so I don’t have to bike on the road and I’ve never worried about my safety while biking. Drivers are very aware of bikers, and certain streets are bike-only (although cars are allowed if the person lives on the street). All in all, biking is not a stressful activity at all, so it’s no surprise that you see young kids biking by themselves as well as elderly people (in their 70s+) biking around. 

Everyone here has bike fenders/mudguards and baskets, so you never have to worry about your clothes getting splattered with mud or not having enough room to carry groceries or other things. Most bikes are old fashioned/dutch style, compared to the style of bikes you usually see in the US. People bike leisurely, so you don’t really have to worry about arriving to work in a sweat. Surprisingly, the weather hasn’t been that much of an issue for me. Some people have special parkas or waterproof pants (sort of like snow pants) that they wear on rainy days, but there’s only been 1 or 2 times that my pants have gotten significantly wet while biking, so I haven’t felt the need to invest. (It did hail on me once, which was definitely the worst commute experience to date!)

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Nearly all of the students at my school bike–so the school has a huge bike garage of sorts….and hardly any car parking spaces! Most of the teachers seem to bike to work as well. The students here have an immense amount of freedom, which is increased by having a bike and being able to bike anywhere. During the school lunch breaks, for instance, they can leave the school grounds and go into the city center for food / wander around…and they don’t have to get permission to do that. When school’s out, around 3, the main intersections look like this:

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Typical bike ride:

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A bit of my daily commute:

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Of course, as much as I love biking, there are a couple downsides to it being the main mode of transportation. The first couple of weeks after I moved here I was exhausted from adjusting to the level of activity required for living here! It definitely takes some time to get used to it. Sometimes I’d really just love to be lazy and drive to work–sometimes I consider taking the bus, but it’s expensive, doesn’t save me time, and I still have to do a fair amount of walking from the bus stop to where I need to go. The other annoying thing is being sick and not having any food or needing to go to the doctor, which is just a pain in the neck. In that case, the bus doesn’t really help that much as it would take just about the same amount of energy / time as biking. It can just be a pain sometimes to have to physically get yourself somewhere and then have to climb back up the 5 flights of stairs on the way back. Obviously, my apartment isn’t really accessible to anyone who’s disabled–and if I broke a leg, I’d be in a lot of trouble. So as much as I love bike/foot transportation, some days I really wish for a car and elevator 🙂 

The other thing is keeping up with repairs! My bike, as lovely as it is, has problems about once a month. First I had a flat rear tire. Then the lights didn’t work. Then the front hub was cracked and it wouldn’t spin at all and had to be carried to the bike repair shop (fortunately I didn’t have an accident because a cracked hub is actually really dangerous). Then the the chain needed to be replaced because it was rusty and the pedals squeaked terribly. Then the back light stopped working, and now the back fender/mudguard is missing a piece and keeps rubbing against the back tire and creating friction. (Ugh! I give this bike so much TLC and look how it repays me!)

Still, at the end of the day, I really love having exercise and fresh air built into my daily routine, and I know it’s going to be one of the things I miss the most when moving back to the US. Wherever I end up, I think bike accessibility will be one of the things I prioritize for my living situation.

I think from the European standpoint it’s really easy to hate on the US with regards to biking or public transportation–focusing on the impression that Americans are lazy and drive everywhere. But I think a big part of the reason that biking hasn’t caught on in the US like it has in places like Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany, has to do with city planning and infrastructure, and not laziness. In Greifswald, everyone bikes because it’s the easiest, cheapest, and fastest option. If there weren’t protected bike paths or if things were too far apart, I can guarantee that the number of people biking would probably drop in half.

The way most Midwestern cities are planned are car-centric, not pedestrian-centric. A lot of times there aren’t even any sidewalks, much less bike lanes. It’s one of the things I really hate most about the Midwest–driving to a grocery store or mall, then having to drive across the street to another store, rather than just walk there, because it’s a big road or there’s no pedestrian access to cross the street.

I would love to see biking catch on in the US–and there’s definitely a trend pushing for that–but I don’t think it’s going to be just a matter of convincing people they need exercise. It will require better urban planning and building new, safer bike paths …ultimately, I think if cities make it so that it’s easier, faster, and cheaper to bike around than go by car, it might start catching on a lot more. Who knows, maybe I’ll go into urban planning and bike activism, because I would love to see that happen 😉 I love living in a bikeable city! It keeps me healthy, it makes me happier, and it’s good for the environment.

xo,

Sarah