Looking around, you see all kinds and all ages, fat and fit, thin and large, nonagenarians and nappy-wearing babies, all on some kind of body-powered two-wheelers. Speaking of teaching them young, Germans don’t seem to believe in those little training wheels that kids in other countries have at the back of their cycles. What goes with this is some innate confidence that every recently born Berliner comes with traffic sense already hardwired. More than once I see a small kid on a bike, a 2- or 3-year-old, stopped on their own at the edge of a sidewalk, nary a parent in sight.
As I look around worriedly, I hear a shout from half a mile away, the kid’s name followed by a ‘Are you coming, or should I go?’ I locate the trainer-progenitor straddling her or his own cycle and waiting.
After a few days in the city, you realise that cycles have their own rights. They get into trains, trams and metros for free. Owners haul in their metal steeds, pushing past pedestrian passengers with the same righteous air as the parents bringing aboard prams and baby-buggies. Folding seats have symbols that indicate that this is a priority area for wheelchairs and cyclists.
Coming from India, the ubiquitous bike lanes and bike parking bays are startling to see each time I return to this city.
The people who don’t seem too sold on this balanced-wheel perambulation are the Turkish and some recent immigrants from Syria and Africa. But as I scan the streets for a wider sampling to turn this observation into a conclusion, I start to notice something: the local food delivery companies like Volt and Uber Eats seem to be using cycles rather than mopeds or motorbikes. Of the delivery agents pedalling around, many seem to be young sardars. After nearly a week of roasting sunlight, I begin to tire of the relentless heat and the fanless, AC-mukt interiors of a city that only briefly comes out of the freezing north European winter. Around 5 pm one day, deep grey clouds gather as if my home gods have heard me. In a few minutes what I can only think of as an imported kalboishakhi – the trusted norwester back home – starts to lacerate the wide avenues. I’m visiting an Indian friend who’s staying in a posh-ish hotel. This being Berlin, they have comfortable smoking sofas on the sidewalk just outside the entrance. Luckily, these are under a kind of awning, and we sit and watch the comedy theatre of people scurrying in the ‘tropical’ downpour. The feet-based passersby seem to be doing better than the cycle-based ones, being able to sidle into any nook and cranny of corporate concrete, whereas the cyclists are trapped in the open with their wheeled albatrosses. ‘Almost like home,’ says my friend as he sips his gin and tonic. ‘Almost, almost,’ I say, sipping mine.
After two hours and four double G&Ts, the storm finally abates. Off-screen, we hear the blast of bhangra from a portable speaker before the sizzle of wheels on wet pavement. The passing delivery guy is South Asian, but without a pagri. A middle-aged German lady has been quietly drinking her beer on the next sofa. As the cyclist passes, she starts to groove to ‘Kudiya nu bach ke rahi’.
‘I like very much your music!’ She informs us with a grin.