Some white stuff from above

Last weekend, just before I headed off to Innsbruck, it started to snow in Vienna. It also did when I returned on Sunday evening, and it still does!

Now that's quite some snow for Vienna.

Gray with colors

Winter in Vienna generally means gray. A lot of gray sky. It's cloudy and foggy. If at least it would snow! But it very rarely does. What to do?

I survive this time of the year by wearing some colorful clothes. An additional benefit of this brightening up is that it also increases visibility. Today I set off with Paula for a short gift shopping trip. Since it's cold one has to wear proper protection anyhow. My choice of the day was a blue and red woolen combination. Feels much warmer already, doesn't it? What are you favorite winter cycling clothes?

Ready ...

... and go!

Learning how to ride a bike

In Mussoorie -- a small town in the foothills of the Himalaya ranges -- I had the pleasure of watching a little boy taking the first steps towards becoming a cyclist. He was on a pink-and-yellow bike that was actually too small for him. Attached to the rear wheel there seemed to be a construction for training wheels, but the wheels were missing. His father walked beside him and gently held on to the seat/backrest.

A trip to the central cemetery

robably it's not to everybodies taste to spend her/his weekends on a graveyard, but I like to visit the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna from time to time. The Zentralfriedhof is the biggest cemetry in Vienna. It is located in the outskirts of the city (in Simmering) and can easily be reached by bike. There are also various connections by public transport (e.g. trams 6 and 71).

I set off in the morning at the Donaukanal bike path ...

Cycling in a heat wave -- it's not about shorts, it's about ventilation!

Heat waves in Austria are not something pleasant. The houses are built for cold temperatures, not warm. Currently I experience:

• outside: 37°C (= 99 F) in a city full of concrete, few trees
• asphalt: 50°C (= 122 F) according to some measurements by Asfinag
• office: certainly > 30°C (= 86 F), estimated 32°C (= 90 F) during the day in a metal-glass-house with no air conditioning whatsoever
• home: 28°C (= 82 F) and no air conditioning, almost no cooling at night

Anybody out there with more?

Cyclist in Jaipur, India -- around 43°C (= 109 F)

The four of us out of town

A few days back Velouria (from Lovely Bicycle!), Jaqueline, Paula and me (anna) headed off for a day trip along the Danube. For not-so-regular readers of our blogs let me note that Jackie and Paula are not real human beings, but our dearest city bikes. Although lifeless they acquired the status of a good companion, and henceforth they shall be treated as such.

Initially we had only planned to cycle as far as Klosterneuburg, but continued along the Danube on the EuroVelo 6 route till Greifenstein. So all in all we cycled about 45 km (that is 28 miles).

Map of the tour [plotted using anachb.at]

Radfahren in Wien -- a review of Vienna's new bicycle guide

"Radfahren in Wien" (Cycling in Vienna) is an extensive handbook with a lot of useful information about cycling. Although it is strongly related to Vienna, I can highly recommend it for a general German-speaking audience (in particular, if situated in Austria). This is, because it is an exhausting and wittily written, smart and neatly designed handbook on almost anything you ever wanted to know about cycling.

"Radfahren in Wien" by Alec Hager and Johannes Pepelnik

Living trendy

I do all my grocery shopping on foot, because it's easier after work and very close to home. Thus I almost thought that I would not be able to complete the "Carry a load on your bike -- groceries, etc." task of the LGRAB Summer Games.

Well, it so happened that I had to go shopping for other purposes. I'm rather lazy when it comes to housework, and although our new couch is pretty nice it gets dusty quite easily. What to do?

For a while know I was tinkering with the idea of buying a fancy throw-over. Today I finally grabbed my "new look" bike bag and Paula and headed off to the 20th district with a mission.

Couch with "new look" Lilly

Crossing streets

This is my friend Alberto crossing a street in Vietnam. He told me that there are about 90% scooters in the modal split there, and that people even take them into shops etc. The noise level is very similar to Indian cities, however, there are already more cars in those places.

In Vienna, many streets have traffic lights. So crossing a street as a pedestrian (and often also cyclist) is done by the following procedure:

• approach the junction
• (press a button)
• wait
• wait
• wait
• cross

You're a poor guy/girl and have to cross once more? Too unfortunate. You'll have to wait again, because there are hardly any "diagonal" traffic lights. I don't know how there are called technically, but I mean those where you can use cross diagonally because all the vehicular traffic has a red light. In Austria (and most other European countries I know, apart from Ireland) motorists have green at the same time as pedestrians and cyclists on, e.g., a parallel segregated bike path. Of course, car drivers have to yield those, but sometimes there are dangerous situations, especially on bike paths that are somehow visually detached from the road. Be aware!

Many times on small roads I find that the traffic lights are not necessary because a) there is not much car traffic in the first place and b) pedestrians have green when most of the car traffic has too, anyhow.

In Vienna, there are a lot of traffic lights for cyclists. The seperate ones are pretty neat, as long as they are not "on demand" lights (it takes ages for them to turn green, and especially when I wear thick gloves in the winter, they are not so easy to use).

Two "on demand" traffic lights for cyclists in the 3rd district

However, most of the time cyclists' lights are included in the pedestrians' ones. This is a big disadvantage, because cyclists are much faster than pedestrians, and we could do with a much shorter clearing phase and hence a longer green phase (cyclists are actually much closer to "normal" traffic than to pedestrians). Especially on the Gürtel bike path, cyclists have a huge disadvantage due to these joint lights as well as due to turning cars -- we just miss the progressive signals at almost every junction, i.e. on average every 50-200 m. By the way, this is called "Grüne Welle" (green wave) in German. I like that term, but I would like it even more if it would refer to bike rather than car traffic.

How is it like in your town? Are there many traffic lights? Special ones for cyclists? Green waves for cyclists?

Insurance issues

A few days back my bike and a branch from a nearby tree on the Guertel bike path "collided". The branch got stuck in my chain and blocked it. Nothing bad happened, but I had to fiddle it out and missed a green traffic light. Still, it made me think about my safety.

"Twisted Branches" by TexasEagle

Do you have special bike insurances? Are you insured in case of an accident? Is your bike insured against theft? Overall, do you feel safe and secured when riding a bicycle?

Wow! Bike blossom time!

It's really amazing. On the weekend the temperatures went up, the sun returned after a few months of just gray sky -- and suddenly there are many many more cyclists to be seen on the roads. Spring time kicks in, yeah!

Today I even decided to cycle without a cap and without gloves. The wind in my hair just felt so lovely. Oh, how I missed that! On the other hand, my hands got really cold. On the way back from uni I wore some thin gloves again...

Truly amazing to see the bike paths in the rush hour. It's bike blossom time! Yeah, baby :).

And you're really cool if you find a chewing gum that matches your bike ride.

Velosophing

As some of you already now, I am co-blogging on the Austrian bike culture community velosophie.at. This website has developed from the homonymous free bike magazine velosophie, that is enclosed in the Standard newspaper a few times a year. The back issues are also available online.

The velosophie blog on the very same homepage exists since May 2009 and so far different people wrote about bike related topics: Alec, Thomas, Bea, Inga, Eva, Karo, Günne and me. As you can propably guess, so many people create a fair mixture of opinions and topics . On Sunday a few of us met for dinner and the exchange of ideas. Was a lot of fun, and hopefully also fruitful.

We're there to entertain YOU (at least the German speaking part). So keep an eye on velosophie.at, watch our progress, and -- most importantly -- let us know what you think!

Velosophie Blog Team: Thomas, Bea, me and Alec

Let's have a big round of applaus for media's attentiveness

Did you ever wonder about how much power media has on our lives/mobility? I will examine this power now for print media in Austria, but it also applies to TV stations, radio etc. Please note that I will just try to give some good and bad examples of newspaper articles related to cycling and maybe one should not extrapolate from that to general statements, although it might be tempting.

Negative publicity:

Last year, around the same time, there was an article in the Kurier (an Austrian-wide newspaper) that upset many people who use their bikes on a regular basis. They claimed that cyclists in the winter are simply irresponsible and stupid. I translated and summarized the content of the article earlier, see "Is cycling in the winter dangerous?" if you're interested in the details.

An even worse article is "Radlerdemo endet in Randale" ("Bike demonstration ends in riots") in the Österreich newspaper in 2007. It accussed the participants of the Halloween critical mass of damaging cars despite lack of any police evidence. I personally was there, and did not observe any misbehavior.

I also consider an article about traffic controls in Vienna in the Krone newspaper as rather negative. It mentions the fact that more and more cyclists and pedestrians get injured and killed these days and that the authorities try to countersteer this. However, their main message was that cyclists often do not obey the traffic rules and implicitly it's their own fault when they are run over by car drivers.

Click on the pictures for enlargement

Useless advertising:

Ever seen a bicycle promoted in a newspaper ad? No? Well, sometimes there are ads by sport outfitters (only chains though) that want to sell cheap and crappy mountain bikes. This phenomena is closely related to the spring sell of shitty bikes by food chains, and only addressed to people who -- once a year -- have a wasteful desire to work on their body (I wrote about it last March). These bikes are mostly used once and then rot in a corner. That's why I consider these type of ads rather useless or even counterproductive for a bicycle culture as such.

The above is, on the other hand, accompanied by all these commercials that want to sell us cars. They are everywhere -- in newspapers, on the radio, the TV, on billboards, on flyers, in lotteries, in subway stations and trams. Lately I even came across a car advertised in a showcase at the Danube canal bike path. It's hard to ignore them. Very often they also sneak into usual newspaper articles. I'm sure you are aware of certain "car sections", but have you ever seen a "bicycle section" or a "train section"? I believe there is also some money involved. Or our society has been completely brainwashed already.

Positive publicity:

Yes, there are positive examples. The fact that the Standard became my favorite newspaper probably was not out of the blue. Alright, as every other newspaper they also promote cars and have a car section every Saturday. But they also print bike-related positive articles, and recently even established regular columns on bicycles, cyclists and cycling. For German speaking people I highly recommend the so-called Radkasten by Thomas Rottenberg and various bike stories by Guido Gluschitsch in the Automobil section. By now their articles get more comments than all these car-related ads which, in my humble opinion, clearly shows the need for more positive bike stories in Austria's media landscape. The started to fill a gap that was unknown to be a gap to most people.

Besides, it's not only their stories that attract me. It's the general design of their newspaper. They often just sneak in pictures of cyclists in everyday life. Let it be bike racks when they talk about the cold and snowy weather, a chic cyclist on the ring bike path (opposite of the parliament) when they remark that there is still no photovoltaic plant on the parliament's roof, a cyclist walking his bike along a road that has been closed down due to a water mains burst or a heavily loaded Chinese bicycle when they investigate Asia's economy.

No photo cells on the parliament's roof	China's economy booms	Water pipe burst on Währinger Straße

Of course, the Standard is not the only example of positive bike publicity. I should certainly mention, e.g., the Falter and Presse as newspapers that have an objective or positive view on cycling in general. I particularly like an article by Sibylle Hamann (editor for Profil) in the Presse about cycling, traffic and the interaction of people. Very clear and neutral. Read her article here: "Radfahrkunde für Anfänger".

Well, I simply love positive medial coverage of cycling! Or neutral articles in the first place. I started my own collection of some interesting (so far only German) newspaper articles in a flickr album.

Of course I'm eager to find more articles and am grateful for comments in case you spot some interesting ones :). Someone might even want to examine the media landspace with regard to mobility (as it has already been done for articles on foreigners and other minorities). Could be a very interesting topic for some socio-scientific research.

Parking offenders and a trip to the industrial area of Vienna

Today I just cycled to work and back. The round-trip is about 12km. Last Wednesday morning, however, I cycled about 20km extra. No, not for work. I went to the MA67 and back. The MA67 is the magistrate in Vienna responsible for parking violations. Why I went there?

About half a year ago I reported 13 cars that were parked on a bike lane, the sidewalk and in a "no parking and no stopping at anytime" zone. Right beside a school. They were parents picking up their children. One of these people filed a protest and I had to go to the MA67 for a witness report and to hand in a photographic proof.

Illegal parking on bike lanes is often just considered a trivial offense

Bicycle calenders for a good start in the new year

Last year I ordered a calender from Copenhagen Cycle Chic. This year there are even more options available. Let's start with the classical one -- the Cycle Chic 2010 Calender:

This time Mikael Colville-Andersen also started another project and produced the Copenhagenize Bicycle Infrastructure Fetish Calender which probably suits someone like me better:

My favorite bike-related calender, however, is homemade :). It's this year's Bike Messenger Calender produced by Andreas Stückl (photographer and messenger from Graz):

On his website botenkalender.meinblog.at he also has other nice things, e.g. a bike messenger memory game (simply click on the picture, print, cut out, laminate and play :)):


For ordering any of these calenders, simply click on the respective pictures. If you know and/or prefer any other calenders then let us know too!

COP15 and cycling

COP15, the Copenhagen climate change conference, is trying to find appropriate mitigation and adaptation goals and strategies against climate change. Cycling is a carbon-efficient means of transport that in many cases presents a true alternative to driving a car. Let's take a look at how cycling has been showing in the first week of Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Denmark is a country of utility cycling, which can be an inspiration to both the conference participants and internationally. In Copenhagen, 1/3 of commuters cycle to work or school, but the city goal is even higher. Copenhagen is aiming at becoming the cycling capital of the world and hopes to achieve the cycling commuter rate of 1/2 by 2015. That city knows how to set a positive example!

Campaigns against drink-driving

In Austria a lot of alcohol-related accidents happen especially at this time of the year. We have a Christmas market- and hence also a Glühwein and Punsch-drinking tradition (in English this is called mulled wine and glogg as far as I know). So recently we also have a new campaign against drink-driving (in German):

"Alkohol am Steuer: Könnten Sie damit leben?" / "Drink-driving: Could you live with it?"

It's all about first times (walking, car ownership, being promoted etc.) of Stefan and Tobias -- and about the first time drink-driving and it's consequences... I think the question "Could you live with the consequences?" at the end is of course dramatic, but still very realistic. There is a similar spot from Ireland (in English):

"Could you live with the shame?"

In 2002 we had this, well, rather funny spot about drink-driving in Austria which is more directed towards young people who, on the countryside, often heavily depend on cars when they want to go out. It shows three zombies coming out of their graves and talk about their last disco visit: how drunk they were, that one said he could still drive, that the others joined and wanted to drive to another bar etc. It ends with "Und was ist dann eigentlich passiert?" / "And what happened then?" before you can hear cars crashing in the background:

"Drink + Drive = Death"

Do you have campaigns against drink-driving in your country? Do you think such TV spots can make a difference? If so, which ones do you consider most effective? Do you think they have to be shocking in order to show any effect?

By the way, what blood alcohol limits do you have in your country? In Austria we have a 0.5‰ drink-drive-limit for car drivers (and basically 0 for beginners). However, this regulation is only written down in the Kfz-Gesetz (law for motorists). Generally, and hence also for cyclists, we have 0.8‰ limit which previously used to be the overall limit (before they lowered it in 1998). If you know German and are interested in details you can continue reading in the "Handbuch Alkohol - Österreich" and the newspaper article "Angetrankelt mit dem Fahrrad unterwegs" (about drink-biking).

Do you ever drink-bike? I really try to avoid that. When I plan to go out I either leave my bike at home or just don't drink at all. I think that a slow reaction can be pretty dangerous if one has to ride between cars. Thus in that sense it also matters where I'm cycling. I don't mind having a beer and cycling back home on a lonesome cycle path in the countryside. Good lighting at night, however, is always essential!

Enjoying a ride on a Retrovelo bike

Last Saturday I went to test ride some bikes with Filigree from the Lovely Bicycle! blog. I tried a Retrovelo Paul (the male version of the classy Paula) and Filigree a Specialized Globe Haul (a Mixte for heavy loads), both of which were gladly lent to use by the Citybiker bike shop on Lerchenfelderstraße.

The Retrovelo Paul in the Schmerling Park in Vienna (more pictures on flickr)

Bicycle spirits

An unusual bicycle in Vienna, seen in a bottle shop in Neubaugasse. Handmade, of course. Who wouldn't like to drink from such a marvelous bottle :).

A bike ride a day keeps the doctor away.

Hey, we are missing an indian summer here

Let's talk about winter. I like winter. I love the snow. And the feeling of coming in from the cold to a warm cup of black tea with milk. But ...

View from my window

... it's only October! And it's unusual for Vienna to have snow in the middle of October. Imagine, we still had 28°C (about 82 F) last week in Vienna. Well, now it's less. Far less. We had snow on Wednesday for the first time. Apparently, according to the news (in German), this is the first October with so much snow in Austria in 25 years. Cool, eh?

Oh, I enjoyed it so much. I like to get all wrapped up in my velvet jacket, my warm gloves, my cosy scarf and my colorful cap. And then the snow. Snow just looks lovely. And cycling in the snow is much better than cycling in the rain. One arrives a lot drier. And happier :-).

Ready to hit the road (me in winter clothes)	My "I don't like to be stuck in a traffic jam generated by lazy I-use-my-car-cause-I-don't-want-to-get-a-cool-butt-people when it's f***ing freezing"-face	Yeah, snow is nice (me dreaming of winter already :-))

Well, the snow unfortunately didn't stay and they claim that it will be a lot warmer again next week. Generally fall in Vienna means the following: fog – fog – rain – fog – rain – fog – wind – fog – rain – rain – wind – fog. That's a good weather to get into a slow and lazy mood. For proper snow we probably have to wait a few more weeks ...

Still, it's time to dig out your winter clothes and strong bike lights, and to peacefully cycle into a winter full of snow (as always I hope that there will be a lot of snow, I hope you agree). For some general tips about winter cycling see my posts from last time:

1. the bicycle
2. the cyclist
3. cycling