Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: bicycles

This photo, taken with my cameraphone, was largely a matter of waking up at the right time and place. We took the CityNightLine service to Prague overnight, and I woke up when the train stopped in Freiburg. I took this photo mainly because I was interested in how people had no problem with leaving their bikes chained up overnight. The station management don't seem to have a problem with it either, but most of all it seems like an illogical place to keep your bike. Wouldn't you want it to go to the station? I eventually concluded that these bikes must be owned by people from out of town who commute to Freiburg by train and then take their bike to work.

As I said earlier, the heavy use of bicycles in Germany is really striking in comparison with the Czech Republic (and of course the United States), and many of the bikes that I saw in Munich were either customised or were factory painted or designed to look custom. This bike particularly caught my eye, but there were plenty of others.

Here's a better view of Regensburg Hauptbahnhof. Again note the bikes.

Regensburg is an old Romanl city dating to about 90 A.D. Most of what's left is medieval in nature, although not so much in the vicinity of the station (that building behind the station on the right looks Baroque). These historic buildings were better preserved than most German buildings in World War II partly because Allied commanders spared it on purpose for its historic value. To me as a modern American living in Europe, though, I was impressed by the extensive use of bicycles in Regensburg, as you can see in the racks on the platform.

This is a more realistic view of the 2009 Den bez Aut ride, with riders jamming Resslova Ulice, heading for the Tancici Dum (Dancing House) and the River Vltava.

This protestors from the World Carfree Network (really and truely worldwide, but based in Strasnice) were participating in Den bez Aut, or the day without cars, the largest Critical Mass-style bike ride every year in Prague (unless the organizers, Auto*Mat and Cyklojizda, have to substitute something else, which they occassionally have to do). The ride attracts thousands of people from around the world, even if this photo makes the even look small, and even the conservative mayor, Pavel Bem, has supported this event, actually.

Every month, usually the third Thursday of the month, an organization called Auto*Mat organises a mass bike ride called Cyklojizda. This is considered by many to be Prague's Critical Mass ride, although there are a number of differences from a conventional Critical Mass ride, most notably that it is organised more deliberately, and the relations between the riders and the police are invariably better, usually with the police providing some traffic control for the riders. Typically, the ride starts here, in Namesti Jiriho z Podebrad, but in the past it has also been started from other locations, most notably Staromestske Namesti.

Bicycles are a major mode of transport in Copenhagen, and the city was recently voted the world's third most bike friendly city by Virgin Vacations. You can read a blog about it here in WIRED: blog.wired.com/cars/2007/11/where-are-the-m.html

I almost forgot this yesterday, but this was where my Berlin tour started, as the tour guide wanted to go here first. As in most major mainland European cities, Berlin's mainline, commuter, and urban transit railways are integrated (and were even under Communism, when the Communists were given charge of the railways in both the East and the West of Berlin). In general, the transport network is well unified and functional, unlike in London, where it's been partly privatized and fragmented beyond belief, or in L.A., where it transport means either a 10 m.p.h. traffic jam, or an 80 m.p.h. demolition derby. Here you can see Berlin Zoologicher Garten Bahnhof, which has both mainline and subway trains, in the foreground in a bus stop, and of course there are quite a few bicycles as well.