Exploring the 800-year-old city of Berlin on two wheels should be on every biker’s bucket-list. Love to bike? With 650 miles of bike paths and 710 bicycles per 1000 residents, Berlin is incredibly bike-friendly. In fact, bikers account for close to 20% of the total traffic in the city. That is no real surprise because automobile parking is so difficult to come by in the city, that biking is a popular alternative.
What makes Berlin a bikers paradise?
First of all, most of the city is flat. Secondly, Berlin has a highly developed bicycling infrastructure with bike lanes on roads, mandatory bicycle paths, plenty of bike parking, off-road bicycle routes, shared bus lanes, combined pedestrian/bike paths and marked bikes lanes on sidewalks. There are even dedicated Fahrradstrassen (bicycle streets) where bikes have priority, and vehicles are limited to 30km/hour (18 miles/hour). Don’t want to bike the entire distance to your destination? No problem. With the purchase of a bike ticket, bikers are allowed to carry their cycles on the S- and U-Bahn trains, trams and busses.
Bikers Paradise Berlin. Bikes parked along the Hauptbahnhof, Berlin’s main train station. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2016, www.walled-in-berlin.com
Bike Rentals
Berlin is a bikers’ paradise because bikes may be rented at rental stations throughout the city. Many of the stations are located in the heart of the city near Friedrichstrasse, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain and Zoologischer Garten. All you need to do is decide what you want to see. At http://www.visitberlin.de/en/experience/sport-metropolis/bicycle-tours/ you may choose from 56 guided tours. But if you prefer to explore the city on your own, visit https://www.komoot.de/ for maps to plan your own tour. Finally, the German railway company, Deutsche Bahn, offers rental bikes. Available at major intersections in the central part of the city, these bikes may be rent for just just €1 for 30 minutes and €9 for the day. The program is called “Call A Bike” and is offered in conjunction with train tickets. For details go to https://www.callabike-interaktiv.de
Popular Bike routes through and from Berlin
One of the most popular bike paths, the Mauerweg (Wall trail), traces the ex-frontier between east and west Berlin. Or you may opt to ride along the runways of the former Tempelhof airport or of the controversial and not yet completed Berlin Brandenburg International Airport. (http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/berlin-brandenburg-airport-boondoggle/ and http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/berlin-brandenburg-airport-project-from-hell/) The choice is yours. There are even several long-distance bike paths that start in Berlin: the Berlin-Copenhagen route, the Berlin-Usedom route and the Berlin-Leipzig route. Or try the Berlin section of the European Route R1. Whatever you decide, you have come to a bikers’ paradise when you visit Berlin.
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
Tags: Berlin, Berlin-Copenhagen route, Berlin-Leipzig route, Berlin-Usedom route, bicycle streets, bike friendly cities, biker, Call A Bike, Deutsche Bahn, European Route R1, Fahrradstrassen, Mauerweg
