Cycling saved my life. It's simply, by a wide margin, the most demanding, most beautiful, and most ridiculous sport there is, and it always comes down to how you frame the ride: a short commute becomes a sprint, a race among friends becomes a relaxed coffee ride, boredom turns a nice little loop into a stage of the Tour de France. But whichever of these paths I take, the calm in my head sets in immediately. You start pedaling and the switch flips.
A normal desk day is unthinkable for me by now, simply too monotonous.
Cycling in Berlin started out as a sporting counterbalance for me; I was a cook, and having some variety became extremely important. Back then, long before Corona, I needed that balance. One Sunday I bought a folding bike at the flea market by Ostbahnhof and just rode off.
Instantly hooked. The mix of mild summer nights, a couple of after-work beers (non-alcoholic, of course, wink), the not-too-loud folding bike, and the gorgeous nighttime Berlin skyline gave me wonderful rides home. At the time I lived near Yorckstraße and had to ride home from work at Hackescher Markt. As a newcomer to Berlin, those warm summer nights hit different. Everything is alive and loud, the streets are buzzing, my grin unbeatable.
I urgently needed to get myself a faster bike, because the urge for speed was strong. Naturally it was an old steel steed named Monza, naturally I got ripped off, and naturally the bike was a pile of junk, but it was at least noticeably faster and I was well and truly hooked. The gears shifted on the down tube, with no indexing. That's where I learned something new right away. Didn't go too well at first, but it's fun too, when the chain really rattles across the cassette, giving it a nice acoustic atmosphere. By now I'm a trained mechanic, bike courier, steel-frame enthusiast, and who knows what else. When I'm not doing that, I rescue people from crashing planes or fetch cats down from the moon. But more on that soon, in part 2.
Courier The Dentist #37 belongs to CROW Courier, which replaces cars with cargo bikes and, in doing so, helps improve quality of life in the city. The sustainable courier service also fosters a cooperative way of working. Info at crowberlin.de