Bike Hire in Wismar

The following companies offer bike hire in Wismar:


Buddha Bike´s
Owner: Martina Fritz
Dankwartstraße 49
23966 Wismar

E-Mail: info@buddha-bikes.de >>>

Telephone: +49 (0) 3841 – 4 73 62 02
www.buddha-bikes.de



Fahrrad Wulf
ABC-Straße 13
23966 Wismar
T:+49 (0) 3841 282787
Fax: +49 (0) 3841 213448
E-Mail: info@fahrradwulf.de

www.fahrradwulf.de

Both websites are in German. The word for Bike Hire is Fahrradverleih.

How you celebrate the invention of the bicycle?

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Mannheim will celebrate 200 years of cycling next year. One of the suggestions made to celebrate this is that downtown Mannheim should be car free for the weekend of 11 and 12 June. This idea was suggested by the Green Party and is backed by the SPD, the German centre-left party. The reaction of the local shopkeepers could be summed up in the phrase, "Are you off your trolley?". The centre-right CDU suggested a car free Sunday. The Greens want a car free weekend and the shopkeepers pointed out with some force that 60 or so % of their turnover for the week is on Saturdays. Eighty % of the customers come from the Umland, from the region. Most of these come by car. Some shop keepers have responded by threatening to close their shops on the Saturday. One suggestion is that the roads leading to the multistorey carparks should be kept open, which does not find favour with the Greens. I personally am not that worried about a car free day, especially as trams and buses would be running normally. I do wonder what all the fuss is about. I don't think a car free day will encourage people to cycle thirty or so km into Mannheim.

Cycling the Camino's Aragon Route

We have recently walked the Aragon Route of the Way of St James: Somport Pass - Jaca - Sangüesa - Puente la Reina. I had been asked by a friend for information on the possibilities of following the trail on a mountain bike, so we kept our eyes open. 

The Aragon arm of the Camino is not the main route. It is much quieter. We saw ten other pilgrims/walkers and four cyclists in the ten days we were walking the Aragon Route. We joined the main trail for a few km on our last day. We saw about 40 pilgrims and 2 cyclists in the hour we walked down into Puenta la Reina. I suspect the Aragon Route is a lot wilder and more mountainous than the main trail. There is little information about cycling available from Tourist Offices. I enquired whenever I had chance. 

The “Camino de Santiago en bicicleta” is a club dedicated to cycling the Camino. Most of its info is in Spanish, including maps. People do cycle the route. There is a guide in Spanish available from the “Camino de Santiago en bicicleta”. The Kompass 1:100 000 walkers’ map struck us as being useless for cyclists from what we could see. 

Bicycles in German TV Police Thrillers

Judith and I are great fans of "Tatort" (Crime Scene) fresh episodes of which are shown on German TV three Sunday evenings out of four. The programme features a police team from a number of different German cities and regions. One of the most popular features a Kommissar (Inspector) and a pathologist in Münster, the cycling capitol of Germany. The inspector cycles a lot in the city centre. What I find unbelievable is that he arrives at a crime scene or a block of flats, he leaps off his bike, throws it to one side and runs into the building, leaving the bike unlocked. His bike is almost always never stolen! In one of the earlier episodes he lost his new MTB and there was a running gag of the inspector seeing his bike and running off to retrieve the bike. With this experience he still leaves his bike unlocked. Weird!

Spezi Germersheim 2016 Initial Impressions

Our first feeling was that there were too many people attending the 21st Spezi Special Bikes Show in Germersheim this year. It was very difficult to take photographs in the halls. It could have had something to do with the weather. It was brass monkey weather and wet with it, at least on Saturday, so the outdoor exhibitors definitely had to stamp their feet to keep them warm. We spent some time wandering around the three halls but I have never run round the outdoor stands as quickly.

My second feeling was why  the Germersheim Stadthalle administration cannot organise fitting fresh roller towels in the male WCs. There are four machines but in my experience over the years only one will have a wet wrinkled tail of towel hanging from it.

SPEZI is the world's largest show for recumbents, recumbent tricycles, quadracycles, folding cycles, tandems, family cycles, velomobiles, transporters, electrical bikes, special needs bikes, adult kick scooters, child and load trailers, customised designs and accessories. Our feeling was that it is still a show for the type of bike or trike that causes onlookers to ask questions. The show has got a bit slicker over the years, but it is still down to earth and you can easily spend half an hour or so chatting to chief engineer of a bike or trike company. There aren't many salesmen or -women in suits knowing little about the products only how to sell on the stands. My feeling is that we visitors are all trike/folder/cargo bike fans/freaks/nerds together with family and friends looking at vehicles for disabled or vertically challenged members or mates. The market for disabled folk plays a major role. I was surprised but I read today that Transport for London has found that around 15% of disabled people in London actively cycled for transport in 2014, compared to 18% of non-disabled people.The other trend I felt was important was city centre logistics and transport for craftsmen using cargo bikes and e-bikes. There were even four British bike or trike manufacturers represented.

Over the next few days we will write about the exhibition, but here is a photograph of the Schwalbe stand. I wanted to ask whether one could buy a 16" JUMBO JIM tyre (on the right below) for a Brompton but my nerve failed me at the last minute.

Henty Wingman

If you need to take a suit to work and you want run or ride there by bike or motorbike to arrive at work with a suit that looks presed and not like you have slept in it, then check out the Wingman from Henty: http://henty.cc/. It's a suit bag that wraps round an inner bag which you can wear as messenger bag or strap it on the bike. I have not seen the gear and the nearest stockist is in Frankfurt. Anyway I am a pensioner and have stopped going to work. From the YouTube film I've seen it looks well made and is an excellent idea, albeit very speciaised for a limited range of uses. It will take the stuff for the office like the suit, shirt, tie, shoes and socks. It will take a tablet. If you want to use anything else, like a laptop I think you will need to buy the Wingman Backpack which resembles a tubular rucsac.  

Do you need an excuse to avoid the London Marathon?

In case you wish avoid taking part in or watching the London Marathon on 24 April 2016, then consider going to the Special Bike Show in Germersheim, Germany on 23 and 24 April 2016. More interesting I suspect as well and the beer is cheaper. See you there.

A Brompton saves the day

German public television offers a fictional police procedural programme on one or other of the channels every evening. Last night (8 April 2016) we watched the latest episode of "Der Alte" on ZDF about a murder squad in Munich. The main suspect was visited by two detectives primarily to unsettle her and to what see she did next. Outside another detective waited in a large BMW to follow the suspect when the other two left. They left. Suspect comes downstairs. She climbs on a fashionable training bike, one of those mudguardless fixies and flashes off. The detective realising he cannot follow her by car, opens the boot, produces a Brompton, which he unfolds rapidly in a professional manner and nips off to follow her to the flat of a witness. The suspect intended to silence the witness for good, but the Brompton riding detective was able to arrest her and the case was almost solved.
I wonder if a Brompton is standard issue in all of the big BMWs driven by the Munich Police on TV? Will we see more of our beloved bicycles in future? The series has just come to an end at the moment, so we will have to wait a few months to see.

E-bikes for the over 60s

As we wrote recently, we borrowed two e-bikes over the Easter weekend to take part in a course for whiteheads in Mannheim organised by the Police at the Jugendverkehrsschule (Road Safety Centre for Children). We spent the Easter weekend cycling with electrical assistance around the neighbourhood. On Tuesday afternoon nine e-bikers met and listened to a policeman who himself has no car and uses an e-bike for transport on:

• legal aspects of e-bikes in Germany, 
• e.g. maximum allowed speed, 
• pedal assisted rather than electrically propelled
• no need for a licence plate or insurance placard 
• helmet not proscribed but very highly recommended
• motor position
• Most useful of all for us was the statement that if one hires an e-bike as one leaves the hire station one should securely mount the bottom on the saddle and both feet on the pedals before starting pedalling to keep control of the bike. It is difficult to keep control of the bike standing up with one foot on a pedal.
• discussion on helmets and the Swedish head airbag system.

The police officers then checked the positioning of our helmets on our heads -

• one finger between eyebrow and front of helmet
• the down straps should be vertical
• maximum two fingers space between chinstrap and neck. 

We went out to the test track where he cast an eye over the various bikes. The Road Safety Centre has a model road layout with roundabout and we were soon pedalling round the track weaving our way through slaloms, cycling tighter and tighter circles and braking to order. This went on for three quarters of an hour before we retired to the classroom again to drink a cup of coffee and do the written road safety test normally done by school children. We passed the test.
We then got on our bikes for a half hour ride round very quiet suburban roads with a policeman front and back.
We can recommend this type course highly especially if one has not cycled for some years. If your local or regional police do not offer this course then check out your local bike shop or the local cycling club to encourage them to organise this type of course.

Changing trains in Augsburg Station and enjoying the odd snack

Augsburg Hauptbahnhof - Central Railway, or if you insist, Train Station has long been a bête noire where we were concerned. It is one of the few major German railway stations without lifts/elevators and so if you are going to change trains here give yourselves plenty of time. You need to walk and carry your plus baggage down a steep flight of steps to the tunnel running under the lines and then up another steep flight to get to the platform you need. If you cycle to Füssen along the Romantic Road, for example and wish to take local trains back to the main lines then Augsburg is one place you can change to a long-distance train. The good news is that lifts/elevators should arrive in 2021 or 2022. Until then it is probably better to travel via Munich.
This is a pity because you will miss a snack bar called URBAN Fu:D in the Augsburg Hauptbahnhof which offers an excellent range of freshly made snacks, muffins, coffee, tea, etc. It is opposite the bookshop in the entrance area of the station.

First impressions of an e-bike

We are on reasonable terms with the owner of our local bike bike shop. He has invested heavily in quality e-bikes - Flyer, Kalkhoff and Reise und Müller, to name just a few. He has three or four slightly older Flyers that would-be customers can borrow. The police road safety department in Mannheim our nearest big, well biggish, city offers short e-bike training courses for seniors. We signed up for one and have borrowed two of the Flyers from the bike shop for the course, which is on the Tuesday after Easter. The shop was closed from Good Friday until Easter Monday. We picked the bikes up on Thursday along with a pair of spare batteries. The batteries were old and somewhat ropey with a range of about 40 or so km using a mixture of standard and eco settings. We had a few days to acquaint ourselves with the bikes.

The bikes are eminently sensible hardtail city bikes with adequate baggage racks, hub gears, step over frames and an upright cycling position. They are a wolf in a sheep's clothing. They look like and are as practical as a grannie bike, however once underway one reaches 25kph very quickly even using the eco setting. The bikes are great. Continuous speeds of 20 or even 25 kph are possible against a head wind that would have us travelling at half this speed on a solely human-powered bike. They are eminently suitable for longer local trips.

Will we buy two? Not at the moment.  We have developed a mobility concept that fits our lifestyle well. We walk or cycle within Viernheim, mainly on our Brompton folding bikes or use the local bus. We both have pensioners' travel cards that give us free travel over a wide area once we have purchased them. They cost about €400 annually. For day walks we use our pensioners' travel cards to give us cheap travel into the Odenwald or the Palatinate Forest. Once in the hills the provision of local bus and trains there is good enough to allow us enough flexibility to enjoy linear walks. For multi-day bicycle tours we can use our touring bikes or even our Bromptons.  We do use the car occasionally to travel to places that cannot be reached easily by train or bus, e.g. Dinkelsbühl to talk to the Romantic Road Tourist Authority and for our annual trip to Britain.

We see at least two major problems:

• The bikes are heavy to push or carry on to trains.
• Where would we store them? At the moment our normal bikes are stored in the cellar and I can  just about manage to stagger up and downstairs with them, but Judith finds it just about impossible. We would like to install a bike garage at the front of the house, but we need planning permission for this.   

At the same time I think we will hire e-bikes when they make sense. If we were to write another cycle touring guide an e-bike would be a godsend.

• If Cicerone, the best known British outdoor guide publishers ever asked us to update our Swiss Guide we would only take on the work if we could hire e-bikes.  It is eight or nine years since we wrote the last guides and neither Judith's or my pins have got stronger in this time.
• As we wrote recently the Romantic Road has been extended to include Wertheim and we should investigate the route between Würzburg and Wertheim once the signposting has been redone. In which case I would be tempted to take local train to Würzburg from Mannheim and hire e-bikes there for day.

It's almost 200 years since the first bike ride

A von Drais hobby horse

On 12 June 1817 Karl von Drais left Mannheim to travel down to "Schwetzinger Relaishaus" (a coaching inn in Rheinau, a suburb of Mannheim) for a quick refreshment. He cycled, he scooted or he pushed his hobby horse or draisine on Baden's best road which is why he went to Rheinau. It was less than 5 miles. The round trip took him little more than an hour, but it was the "small step for a man and a big step for mankind". It was the start of individual horseless transport. It was the first bicycle.
Although Mannheim is better known as the birthplace of the motor car due to Karl Benz, the city is going to celebrate the 200th anniversary of this ride in a big way.

• There will be a major exhibition on the bicycle in the provincial museum of science and industry: Technoseum from 11 November 2016 until 25 June 2017 - Zwei Räder 200 Jahre Two wheels 200 years. The exhibition will show original hobby horses, historic bicycles and special developments along with social aspects of the bicycle's development and its changing image over the centuries.
• From May to September 2017 films are going to be shown in unusual spots all over Mannheim. The audience will supply the power via bike dynamos.
• Tour de Karl On 2 June 2017 children from classes 4 to 6 will follow the route taken by Karl Drais from Mannheim city centre to Rheinau.

Tour de Karl 2015 Waiting around for the start

• Monnem Bike - das Festival Three days of bicycle events from 10 - 12 June 2017 including hobby horse racing, the recumbent bicycle world championships and a World Klapp event - racing on modified or original Klapprads.
• Monnem Bike - die Show The Finale is an event with theatre and music in the courtyard of the Mannheim Schloß on 16 September 2017.

Mannheim is lies in the middle of good cycling country and is not far from Germersheim, home of the SPEZI Special Bicycle Show, so next year would be a good year to visit SPEZI and get new design ideas by reviewing the history of the bicycle.

Ways of encouraging cycling to work

We are thinking of building a bicycle box for the front of the house and came across the Velo-Boxx which is manufactured in Belgium. It would appear that Belgian tax laws are very cyclist friendly:

Pursuant to article 64 (b) of the Belgian Income Tax Code (WIB of 1992; assessment year 2010), the Velo-Boxx is a 120% deductible expenditure;
ｰ all costs incurred or borne that relate specifically to encouraging employees to cycle to and from work to the extent that any such costs have been incurred or borne in order to:
- Acquire real estate, to build or renovate a facility for parking cycles during the
working hours of the employees; or
- Provide sanitary conveniences or changing rooms, with showers as appropriate.

An excellent idea.

A hotel porter for cyclists or where can I hang my panniers?

We as sensible cyclists use Ortlieb panniers. They are very waterproof and fit on most bikes easily, but when they are half empty they are floppy and look untidy. You often need to scrabble about on the floor to pack them. This is true for most panniers using lorry/truck covering sheets. The owner of the Hotel Neuhaus in Neuhaus near Cuxhafen on the Elbe Cycle Way* noticed this and fitted hooks to take panniers on the walls or radiators of his rooms.
On a bike underway panniers are utilitarian and you can forget about them. However if you need to carry your panniers up to your room using the loops on top of the bags you shortly notice that the blood circulation in your fingers is seriously restricted. It is not pleasant. The owner of said Hotel Neuhaus has developed a trolley on which you hang your panniers to transport your bags from the bike storage area to your room. He is investigating patenting the device. The hotel sounds like a good place to visit. The owner also offers baggage transfer for groups. The hotel's website is www.hotel-neuhaus-oste.de. The big snag it's in German, so use Google Translator.
*BTW it is better to cycle up the Elbe rather than downstream as the prevailing wind is from the west.

Bicycle and e-bike hire in the upper Rhine Valley (Southern Rhineland Palatinate, North Baden) in Germany

Bellorange Fahrradverleih offers a range of hire bicycles in the South of Rhineland Palatinate and North Baden (Black Forest) for both short and long periods. The website is in German, but you can check the location of the bike stations, look at prices "Preise" on the website or ring the company on +49 6323 957 423 1,  where you can chat in English. Bikes can be picked up in:

• Edenkoben.
• Bad Bergzabern.
• Wörth.
• Speyer.
• Bad Dürkheim.
• Bad Wildbad.
• Enzklösterle.

Bikes can be returned to other locations. Many hotels in the area offer this company's bikes for hire. Many of the hire sites only have a few bicycles and so, it is necessary to book, at the latest, a few days in advance. For the busy periods, school holidays, public holidays and the like, for example, it is better to book as soon as you can.

There are two sites in Edenkoben, one of which is the company's central warehouse. This is near to the railway station. Bike hire here is at the time of writing 10% cheaper than in the other locations. Need we say more? Information about rail travel in Germany can be found on http://www.bahn.co.uk and local public transport (bus, railway and ferries) in Rhineland Palatinate and Northern Baden-Württemberg  can found on http://www.vrn.de.

Prices are reasonable. There are serious discounts for multi day and for group hire.
The company offers:

• Touring bikes with 8 gear hub gears and a back pedal brake.
• Touring bikes with 24 gear derailleur gears.
• Premium touring bikes with 30 gear derailleur gears.
• Mountain bikes.
• Pedelecs (e-bikes). As long as all goes well we hope we can hire at least two of these bikes to follow the Rhineland Palatinate Route, mentioned last week.
• Trailers for drink crates, dogs and children. Not all at the same time.
• Helmets.
• Gloves and other oddments. 
• Extra batteries for e-bikes.

We have yet to hire from the company, but from our written contact it seems to be well organised. We will report after our trip later in the year.

Baggage Transport in Rhineland Palatinate west of the Rhine along the Weinstraße (Wine Road)

Rhineland Palatinate is making serious efforts in tourism.  Various companies in the south of the province along the 200km or so Weinstraße (Wine Road) from Bockenheim north West of Worms to the French border at Wissembourg (Alsace) are offering services to cyclists and walkers that we feel are worth knowing about.
For example: Gepäckservice Pfalz (Palatinate Luggage Service) based in Deidesheim, offers both walkers and cyclists the chance to have their bags carried. We ourselves are not madly bothered as cyclists about having somebody carry our gear, but as the company states in its advertising:

• You can take more than two panniers of gear. (However on a bike we find we only need one Ortlieb pannier for a week or so, but are quite prepared to wash clothes and wear the same stuff every night when touring.)
• You can lock your bike up to go for a swim or an ice cream without having to lug your bikes with you or worrying that some rustler is going to steal the bags. You also don't have to find someone to look after your gear. 
• You can buy something along the route and have sent with you without having to carry it. Personally I am not too sure if this is a disadvantage, because not being able to carry the stuff means it is possible to avoid buying a case of wine at a vineyard.

It strikes me as well if you are going cycling for a week or so as part of a grand European tour, you may well have more gear. This service could be useful.
Gepäckservice Pfalz, Kirschgartenstraße 49, 67146 Deidesheim, Germany, http://www.gsp1.de/ (In German), info@gepaeckservice-pfalz.de, T: +49 (0) 6326 982284
Baggage Transport:
1-2 people/day  €20
3 people/day €27
4 people/day €36
Each extra person €2.50
The company also rents out touring bikes.

Car fasting in Lent 2016

Last year we wrote about the Lent car fasting action of the protestant church in Rheinland Palatinate and Luxembourg. The action was a success and over 2000 people took part. The action is being repeated this year from tomorrow February 21 to March 20: http://blog.bistum-trier.de/autofasten/?page_id=3 (in German and French*). It strikes us as an good idea to give up using one's car or using it less for a month and walking, cycling, taking public transport or forming a car pool. It has obvious health, social and environmental benefits. From the point of view of health it is probably more effective than giving up cream cakes for a month.

*Even text from religious organisations can be roughly translated used Google Translator.

Cycle round Rhineland-Pfalz and effectively climb up to Tibet

I have noticed recently there is a fashion amongst road mean and women to climb the height of Mont Ventoux in a day. Basically one chooses a local hill and climbs it enough times until one has climbed the same height as the famous mountain in SE France. Why stop at Mont Ventoux? Why not head for the Himalayas? The south western German province of Rhineland-Palatinate has combined a number of cycle routes running around its borders and set up a 1040km long cycle route that climbs 8000m in total. It is a circular route.
We thought we'd give it a try. We will start in Hordt near Germersheim where we can pick up hire e-bikes. (We think we could do with some assistance at our time of life.) We will then follow the Rhine down to the French border to cycle up across the Palatinate Forest, along the border with the Saarland and then the border with Luxembourg. The route then crosses over the Eifel hills along former railway lines before dropping to the Rhine to cross it and climb into the Westerwald. The route then swings south across the Lahn to reach the Rhine at St Goar and St Goarshausen. Then its a case following the river back down to Germersheim.
There is all the information you need under http://www.radwanderland.de. The route is called Rheinland-Pfalz-Radroute in German.

Sending bicycles from Britain to western Europe

About three years ago we wrote a series of small articles for the atob.org.uk website on travelling to Europe accompanied by a bicycle. We are in process doing a major spring clean and revision of these articles. Unfortunately the slow death of sleeper trains in Europe means that the Paris-Munich and Amsterdam-Copenhagen CityNightLine trains no longer run. These were keystone routes in our suggestions to whisk cyclists and bicycles across the continent. The night trains have been replaced by early morning high speed trains, but these unfortunately do not often take bicycles unless disassembled and put in bags. Apart from flying or hiring one cure for this problem is to send your bicycle on in advance and you can travel across Europe on High Speed Trains unencumbered by a bike bag. I recently came across two British firms that organise shipment. You can send the bike to one place and have it picked up somewhere else for the return, so a long linear ride along a river valley, for example, becomes a possibility. Unlike hiring a bike the you do not have to return it to the starting point. Details, prices, delivery times can be found on the websites.

• Luggage Mule UK Telephone:  0161 870 2364 or 0161 870 2175 Website: https://www.luggagemule.co.uk/
• First Luggage, Telephone +44(0)1895 254 240 (Main Number), 0800 083 5503 (UK toll free) Website: http://firstluggage.com/

Baggage (especially bicycles) forwarding within Germany.

Deutsche Bahn, German Railways offer baggage forwarding services including bicycles. The company does not transport baggage itself, but uses a German logistics company called Hermes. Information about these door to door services is only available in German.You cannot send your bike from a station to another, i.e. you will need a pick up address in Germany and a shipping address. The space formerly occupied by baggage express services on the station will now be filled by a shop selling ladies' underwear or a night club. Such is progress. However you can send a bicycle in two or three days from any German address to any other German address for 27.50€.  If you inform the railways of your wish to send one or more bikes, the pick up service will bring you packing for it or them. For four Euros more you can specify a three hour time window when the bike/s will be picked up. If you send the bike to an airport then it will be stored until you pick it up. You will have to pay a few Euros a day charges, but in case you have damaged your bike or yourself, shipping your bike might be worth doing, rather than lugging it about with you.