DENMARK I

Maybe I should start at the very beginning of this story, because it actually started when I was still back home. A friend at uni had been an exchange student in Copenhagen the year before so I asked her when I needed help with anything. After some time I realized that she would always add „buy a bike as soon as possible when you get there“. She used to tell me that biking is such a big thing in the whole city and that everyone (no matter what job they have, no matter what time of the day and no matter what the weather is like) would bike from A to B. I just trusted her and planned to buy a bike very soon after my arrival. So then I got here and I still remember the first evening when we had beers with the other exchange students I realized that one of them already had a bike and I actually was kind of jealous. While uni started with an intense workshop the other day and everything was still very new to me I always took the metro. As one can imagine that costs some money so after a week or so I took action and got myself a bike. Since then I am actually feeling a bit more local. And I think that I am also saving a lot of money because I literally did not take the metro since then again (at this point I want to add that February 2020 has been the wettest ever recorded here in Copenhagen). But what is so specific about this biking culture here in the city and what are the differences i noticed since I am biking here? When I think about biking back home there are the two scenarios that I am driving a car or biking. Describing it as two scenarios already tells that biking on a street can sometimes be an against each other back home. Here in Copenhagen I feel that there is much more solidarity on both sides, the car drivers and the bikers. Maybe the main supporting thing for this are the basic rules for the bikers. The three hand signs for turning left or right and stopping are very important and always to follow (everybody does that). On that way others know what you are doing and can react to that. With this very basic knowledge one can actually already start to bike around the city and enjoy sightseeing on the wheels. After some time, I observed some more habits that help the traffic to run quicker and I am still trying to learn more and more about this culture. Besides the dry rules of biking in Copenhagen there is of course also the sightseeing part of it. During my first week taking the metro to uni I literally didn‘t see anything of the city. With seeing I mean the actual seeing but also experiencing the city as it lives. Biking brings you to situations where you can experience the culture (for example a parade of the Royal Guards in the city center with march music and a lot of guns). Seeing Copenhagen in all the different weather and light situations will also be an intense memory for me (even if you just look down when it rains and hate everything around). From time to time I would take my phone out if my pocket because I see something in the city I want to take a photo of. Sometimes I realize afterwards that I moved to quickly and that I just took a blurry photo of the street and not the beautiful building or nature in front of me. These bike pictures then become memories of moments for me and the biking culture of Copenhagen is always a part of them.

Andreas Mayr, SS20