The last few winters I have ridden almost every day, rain, snow or shine, but this year I had a 3-week long hiatus while I traveled overseas for the first time to tour Europe with my band. I had planned on visiting as many bike shops as I could while I was over there and was looking forward to checking out the different bikes and talking to people who rode/commuted over there. However, as is always the case with touring in a band, things didn't exactly go as planned.
After nearly being turned around at the border and sent back to America when we landed at Heathrow Airport in London, UK, we headed north to Leeds to stay with our driver, Mez. Mez is welsh, and although he speaks English, I would say at first I only understood about half of what he was saying. After the overnight flight, 6 hour stay in customs, and 4 hour van ride, I wasn't exactly in any shape to go wandering around Leed's in search of an English bicycle shop. England in the winter was probably the dreariest place I have ever been, in the 4 days we spent in the Leeds area, I did not see the sun once. Our sleep schedules were completely off, and it was cold everywhere! Europeans certainly don't use heat and hot water the way we do here.
We left England and traveled through France, where I fell and cracked my head open on a bar, then up through Belgium and to Holland, where we picked up our new driver and van. I had seen a few spandex wearing roadies buzzing around France, but the first time I saw any real bicycle traffic was when we got to Haarlem, Holland. We had a pretty tight schedule to keep, so the only chance I got to see the town was when we walked from our new driver, Guus', squat, to the train station where there was a pharmacy that I could get some bandages for my head. The train station was packed with bicycles, stacked two high! Of course I had heard about Amsterdam and Copenhagan, and seen footage on youtube of their seperated bicycle lanes that seemed to have a constant flow of bicycle traffic, but this was the first time I had really been anyplace like that. It was January and I was seeing more bicycles than cars!
From there, we headed down through Germany, into Austria, where our show got cancelled, and then eastward to Budapest, Hungary. Budapest was my favorite city we went to, the view driving over the bridge into the city was the most impressive thing I saw while I was over there. There was no bicycle traffic like there was in Holland, but I did see a few people, mostly on track bikes, riding around the city. That night we stayed at some random kid's parent's house. He let us in and took off and left us to fend for ourselves. There was no heat, but we all had a cushion to sleep on!
The next day was Banska Bistryca, Slovakia, a beautiful city in a valley surrounded by mountains. The landscape driving up through Slovakia actually reminded me a lot of Vermont. Rolling hills and mountains, snow, and small winding roads, no highways. This was the first place I actually even attempted to go to a bicycle shop. Most of the time we would arrive in these cities, find the venue a couple hours before the show, and wander around for a while by ourselves. We'd have to be at the venue for food and then play the show, and then usually stay at someone's house that we met at the show, so there was really very little time to see the cities, and the time we did have was completely unguided. Unfortunately the shop was closed, and I headed back toward the venue.
The last leg of the tour started with a couple dates up through the Czech Republick, where Mike had suggested I find him a coaster break hub and bring it back for him. Unfortunately for Mike, not only was I broke, but I was sick! We played a show in Prague, but I was so sick I had to go straight to bed after, and slept in the next day while everyone else walked around the city. We played a few more shows back through Germany, and then headed to Amsterdam for an afternoon before we headed 40 minutes south to Leiden, Holland to play our last show in mainland Europe.
Amsterdam was awesome, again, there were more bicycles than cars. Though it seemed like most of the bicycle lanes were not integrated with the road, but seperated from it. A lot of the city had bicycle lanes right on the sidewalk, so being unattentive American's, we found ourselves constantly walking into and through the bicycle lanes and having to jump out of the way of oncoming bicycle traffic. Most of the bicycles were older 3-speeds, much like a lot of the bicycles that we sell here at the Old Spokes Home. Even the new bikes I saw over there were mostly commuter style, I don't recall seeing any track or fixed gear bikes at all, and only a few road bikes.
After Amsterdam, we played one last show in London and then flew home, almost 3 weeks in Europe and I didn't step into a single bicycle shop! But the bike culture was hard to ignore over there, even my band mate Ryan, who has not ridden his bike in almost a year due to a flat tire, turned to me in Amsterdam and said "this is amazing, you must want to stay here!" I kind of did, but I've also been all over most of this country, and I do appreciate what we have here in Vermont. While, it's not much compared to Holland, I do see a good amount of people riding throughout the entire winter, including myself, and after 3-weeks of no riding, I was happy to come home to sub zero temperatures and ride my bicycle to work!
-Derek
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