Coming to Berlin as a courier from Italy, never having been here before and not knowing anyone at first, can catch you off guard and leave you a little disoriented; but luckily the bike courier community is very strong and always ready to welcome you in. Probably because, at the end of the day, we're all pedaling under the same sun or the same rain, even when our streets are different.
I hadn't planned on taking part in the ECMC (European Cycle Messenger Championship, see KuK 05/2026) either, and yet I found myself right in the middle of it. It all started when some friends of mine from Milano City needed someone to represent Liquid Roads (a WTNB* cycling collective) at the championships. The task was simple: run one of the checkpoints during the main race!
Which meant: getting up early to set up the course on Tempelhofer Feld, looking for people because you don't know where to go, moving barriers and tables around with the bikes, working through various logistical hurdles, fighting the wind, and then, finally, the race starts!
You might reasonably ask why anyone puts themselves through all that for something that just simulates the work we do on the street every day anyway. I don't know exactly, but what we do there clearly brings us joy; it makes us visible. In that moment, there's no customer waiting for us and no paycheck, it's simply our game.
We're all in it together, helping each other, so that a moment can exist that represents us, one where we recognize the values that maybe brought us to choose this job in the first place. It's not just four days full of races, it's a chance to come together, exchange views, and share ideas and thoughts about what's going on around us.
I took so much away from this experience, but above all I realized: no matter which direction you ride on Tempelhofer Feld, the wind is always against you.
#M will be part of CROW Courier until the end of August, a courier cooperative run by its own workers, with the goal of replacing cars with bicycles. Concretely, that means improving quality of life for everyone through cargo bike deliveries and bike repairs, entirely without bosses. Info at crowberlin.de