First of all, I have something to confess. I couldn’t ride a bicycle. Well, at least not until a month ago (that’s another post). Anyways, a lot of people told me how awesome it is to ride in Berlin so I’m curious and decided to give it a go. On a form of tandem cycling.
The hubs agreed to this and I promised to try learning to bike again if I liked the experience. So we looked for places to rent a tandem and found one in Tempelhof for 8€/h or 22€/day.It was definitely a good choice because Tempelhof, being an ex-airport means it has a long runway for me to practice on (remember: this was my first time ever riding a bicycle).
Okay, that wasn’t exactly riding. I just wanted to show the first tandem we rented. It was a smallish tandem bike and behind it you could see the open space that was Tempelhof Airport runway.
Some people warned us it’s not easy riding a tandem. Well, in our case it was really fun! Think it might be helpful doing it with someone you’re so used to synchronizing… somehow I felt like Jäger pilots here :P. It took us around two runways laps to get used to it, and after that we decided to try out biking in the city all the way to Brandenburger Gate and Tiergarten.
That first time was really really nice. The sun was shining mildly all day, the routes we chose were good, next to no inconvenience, and I was utterly convinced I wanted to learn to ride.
Who wouldn’t like to repeat this experience, right? Right?
So two weeks later we rented another one at a place just off Checkpoint Charlie. It was a nicer and sturdier bike, albeit heavier and harder to maneuver (said the hubs). It was also more comfortable to ride and you could have it for 24 hours. Which was awesome since we could ride it home and return it the next day (for 24€/24 hours).
This time around, though, Berlin decided to give us the real experience. We accidentally chose a road with big trucks (scary!) and then we got rained on. Typical weather, I suppose. Reminded me it will not be all sunny and nice with a bike ;).
Most of the time it was still a good enough weather though, and we rode up North to Weissensee, and then back in the city, all the way home to Charlottenburg. Made me realize we have a quite nice bike path from around Mitte to home.
We had such a great time we wanted to eventually bought a tandem bike. After I mastered riding on my own and got ourselves an own bike, that is. I’m so looking forward to being good on the bike and actually going to places around Berlin unreachable on foot!