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Living car-free in Berlin is ridiculously easy. I have my own bicycle, but still grab a Jump bike when I've walked somewhere and need to get home faster/easier.
by marcus_holmes 7y ago
Living car-free in Berlin is ridiculously easy. I have my own bicycle, but still grab a Jump bike when I've walked somewhere and need to get home faster/easier.
But this is the summer. I haven't done the winter here yet. That'll be the test.
- zwaps 7y agoIn the last winters it barely snowed in Berlin, so I know quite a few people who kept riding their bikes all through the year. Of course, use your head - if it is damp and then below zero, be careful. Common sense, really. If all fails, public transport is decent enough to get you anywhere on foot. It's not perfect, I think mostly because Berlin is spatially huge and comparably empty. Cities like Paris have a much more dense public transport infrastructure. But I think you never need to walk more than ten to fifteen minutes (compared to a max of five minutes in Paris and London), which is acceptable. There really isn't much of a reason to own a car if you live within the S-Bahn ring.
- galaxyLogic 7y agoJust be aware of those tram tracks riding your bike into them can be deadly. At least in Amsterdam
- marcus_holmes 7y agoYeah, my gf wiped out on those last week. Not fun
- 11235813213455 7y agocycling on snow is quite fun anyway, I've been doing that in Nancy (north-east France) for years, a decade ago Now with climate crisis, it's not really snowing anymore there
- robert_foss 7y agoYou'll still be able to bike, a life-pro tip is to get some gloves for winter biking.
- StudentStuff 7y agoBiking in the snow can be quite fun, I enjoyed it last winter up here in Seattle. Good gloves, glasses and rain pants are useful to make it an enjoyable ride tho :P
- Scoundreller 7y agoI highly recommend a bank-robber style facemask. But I'm regularly dealing with colder temperatures than Seattle.
- thijsvandien 7y agoNote that these are not legal everywhere.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoBanks, for instance...
- Scoundreller 7y agoIntent matters. When it’s -20C, it’s fine. When it’s +30C...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- orthoxerox 7y agoYou mean like a ski mask? Because I instantly imagined someone biking while wearing a Beagle Boys style mask and got confused as to why that would help.
- sam_lowry_ 7y agoI am lucky to live on the outskirts of Brussels and cycle for 17km to work once or twice a week. I would have done it every day, but I have to put kids in school and pick them up by 17:20. Schools (and kids, by extension) are a major traffic issue and impediment to cycling.
- captainbenises 7y agoCargo bikes! You can easily take one or two children on a cargo bike (yuba for example).
- adrianN 7y agoI'm cycling year round in Berlin. It's really no big deal. Get some good gloves and something to protect your ears and you'll be fine. It hardly snows anyway and the roads are cleared fairly quickly when it does.