Postcards from Germany: I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike
By Ashley Moore
May 17-18, 2008
With gas priced at over eight dollars per gallon, traveling in Germany is necessarily unique. Road trips are not as common as in the US, thanks to costs and the fact that many younger people don’t own cars. Fuel prices, upkeep and insurance deter many from purchasing autos until later in life so that university bike racks are crammed full while parking lots are comparably empty. How do people travel, then? Trains and buses are popular options, but tickets are often expensive or travel times long, so Germans do something almost unthinkable to many in the States: hitch a ride with complete strangers found through one of the many websites devoted to carpooling.
Though BMWs, Audis, Mercedes and Volkswagens are all plentiful in Bavaria – it is Germany's richest state – there is no shortage of impossibly small autos that give new meaning to the word "compact". These tiny two-seaters evoke images of Playskool toy cars from my youth, cars seemingly cut in half. And you can bet that each of these autos has a standard transmission. Germany even issues separate licenses for people who can't drive a stick. Standard or automatic, to those of you driving around today, have a good one, or as we say in German "Schoenes Tage!" Questions, comments or suggestions: guymongirl1@gmail.com.