Bike Berlin or Bust, or "Of Bells and Bozos"

Today was Day Five of our 5-day Berlin vacation. Our plan was to rent a couple of bikes, meander around the city all day, and turn them back in at the last minute.

Alas, the best-laid plans often go awry. But it all worked out OK. Read on . . .

This morning was positively gorgeous. Warm breezes (after a week of cool morning temps), bright sunshine. We dressed in casual bike wear (Jeff in shorts, me in cargo capri’s); stuffed our phones, ID, and (me) camera in our bike shirts; and set off for Fat Tire Bikes, in Alexanderplatz. There we rented two blazing-orange cruiser-type bikes: mine was named Carrie Kat; Jeff’s was Joan of Arc. 

They came with bells and Bozos. Really.

Regular readers of CF (all 3 of you) know that my main ride is a Serotta titanium racing bike. I’m really not used to a cruiser. I am not sure how anyone can ride one. Honest to God, it was like pedaling a sofachair. Slow, heavy. Wide springy seat, upright position. Pitiful pedaling power. And I did not feel steady at all, especially at slow speeds . . . which was mostly what was required, as pretty much all of our riding was done either on sidewalks or on the street, usually (but not always) in specially-marked bike lanes.

Berlin is a huge biking city, but its cyclists are a motley bunch, dressed in everything from suits to cutoffs and flip-flops. They ride everywhere, and on every surface. Pedestrians mostly stay out of marked bike lanes, and behave themselves. Mostly. I had to use the bell (and sometimes the Bozo) numerous times, to warn people to step out the way on narrow sidewalks.

Regular CF readers also know that I tend to have, um, "dismounting" accidents. I’ve only crashed once in nearly 20,000 miles, but I have had numerous incidents involving slowing, stopping . . . even fallovers after I’ve stopped. (now that’s really embarrassing.)

So, anyway, what happened to me? Well, I had another “dismounting” incident . . . I hadn‘t had one in a while, after all, and I guess it was time. See, I was making a jug handle left turn at an intersection (turn right, do a U, stop at the light and wait for it to go green), when a pedestrian stepped out right in front of me. I had to stop abruptly. And when I stopped, I came off that wide, cushy seat awkwardly. It kinda grabbed the back of my pants, so that I more or less fell off the bike. I managed to stay upright, but banged my leg on the front wheel fender. And unfortunately, that fender had thin metal mounting posts that normally have little rubber stoppers on them. Except for the one that I banged . . . it didn’t, of course.

Yep, that’s right. I gouged my leg. Ouch. I’ll spare you the details, other than that I’m glad I had tissues with me, and that it took about 15 minutes before we could start moving again. And all the while, across the street were a bunch of animals from Circus Aron, which was just setting up somewhere close by. Had I not been distracted by pain and blood, I would have been over there looking at the ponies and llamas. As it was, I got to listen to them. For quite a while.

Once I was able to get on the bike again, we went back to the hotel. Because I tend to be an accident-waiting-to-happen, I travel with a basic first-aid kit. This time, it came in very handy -- in Germany, as in most of the other parts of Europe I’ve been to, you can’t just walk into a grocery or variety store and get bandages and first aid paraphernalia. They don’t carry such items . . . you have to go to a special store for that . . . an apotheke (“chemist“ or pharmacy), or a drogerie (drugstore). I cleaned and bandaged my leg, and we set off again -- headed for Kreuzberg, and the twice-weekly Turkish Market. This time I managed to stay on my armchair-with-pedals, not hit anyone, and not bash any more body parts.

We figured we could get a small snack at the Turkish Market, and we did find a lot of yummies there. Mostly they were of the fresh fruit and vegetable variety; also, lots of cheeses, meats, olives. We split a gözleme, with spinach and cheese (it’s a type of grilled puff pastry).

Other than food, the market was filled with more bolts of cloth than I’ve seen anywhere else, outside of a piece goods store.

 

 

For lunch, Jeff wanted to find a Turkish eatery. But as we walked down Kottbusserdamm, we saw nothing but cheap döner kebap places and tchotchke shops. Furthermore, we saw that clouds were starting to build up in the west, and they were looking pretty dark. Uh oh.

As we reached the end of a long block, we had just about decided to turn back and get our bikes . . . and then we saw it:

Hadigari Grillhaus, a lovely little Turkish grill restaurant. We checked out the menu, then went inside. Jeff knew just what he wanted, and he got it: a nicely-grilled whole fish:

I got grilled salmon and some of the best rice I’ve ever had (and that’s saying a lot):

Oh, and we got what the waiter said were French Fries, but were actually more like little thickish potato chips, nicely puffed (upper left corner).

Our lunch break was well-timed, as it turned out. While we were eating, all those dark clouds turned into a protracted thunderstorm. It rained for a considerable amount of time -- not hard, but it just didn’t want to give up. After waiting more than half an hour (which included two gratis cups of hot tea), I begged a plastic bag to wrap up our phones and my camera, and we we ventured back outside to tough out the weather. We retrieved the bikes in a light drizzle (accompanied by distant rumbles of thunder), wheeled them down the sidewalk, and debated getting on the U-Bahn, which from that point would have taken us directly back to Alexanderplatz.

Unfortunately, there was no elevator at Schönleinstrasse -- I went down and walked the entire platform, looking for one. Now, do you think you could lug a sofachair - two sofachairs, actually - down two flights of stairs? Even ones with pedals? Hah! Nope, would not have worked. We decided to ride back to Alexanderplatz. Actually, it was pleasant! The rain was light, the breeze was cool, and the thunder had virtually disappeared. "Should we take a small side trip through the Tiergarten?" we debated . . . Then we heard the boomers start up again. OK, nix that, let’s just get these babies back to the rental store. And so we did . . . stopping for a cup of espresso at Segafredo (you thought I was going to say Starbucks, didn’t you?) before returning to the hotel and changing out of our damp bikewear.

So, was today a bust? No, I don’t think so . . . It didn’t go quite like we imagined it would, but we did get to bike in Berlin, even if it was for less than 10 miles; we did get to the Turkish Market; and we did have fun! And I didn’t have to worry, after all, about having forgotten to buy some sunscreen.

And we spent the rest of the day shopping -- at Karstadt Sports (where we picked up some new bikewear) and at KaDeWe (Kaufhaus de Westens), where we had dinner in their magnificent food hall -- which featured, among other things, cases and cases of more varieties of sausages than I've ever seen in my life:

 

I shall leave you, then, with a picture of my evening repast: weißwurst and currywurst (basically, a sausage topped with tons of catsup and paprika):

All this, and weißbeer, too . . . ah, life is good.