The largest bike show in the world, Eurobike, is a week of walking countless halls checking out the newest of the new product lines offered by companies worldwide.  It’s both impressive and exhaustive.  When Gary Gleason, Jason Moeschler and I traveled to Germany to represent for Freedom USA/WTB USA, we decided to travel with our bikes to commute from Weingarten, the location of our hotel, to the halls of Eurobike, located in Friedrichshafen.  What we found was an impressive network of separated bike paths, small villages, and beautiful countryside.

It is no wonder that Germany boasts a bicycle ridership figure in the neighborhood of 20%.  Besides the first night returning to our hotel where we took a number of wrong turns, the result of jetlag, getting from point A to point B in Germany is mostly a matter of reading signs, following the arrows and pedaling your bike in the correct direction.  Of the near 35 mile roundtrip commute, less than a mile was on roadway shared by cars.  Most of the trip was on separated bike paths along with a few light dirt paths.  It seemed that bike ridership to the show was decent, but not overwhelmingly impressive.  As you can see from the bike rack photo, the bike parking was never full.  In fact we passed several traffic jams on the way to the show every morning, an interesting dichotomy to experience in one of the world’s most bike-friendly capitals. 

It was a pleasure to bike in Germany and I would recommend it to anyone seeking to explore Europe in-depth.  The mere act of commuting by bike to the show transformed our work trip into an adventure holiday.