Cargo bikes are interesting “for many target groups”, also for craftsmen and for people in the country. This is how Sebastian Hansen, a green candidate for the Bundestag in the Würzburg constituency, recently put it on Twitter. Oh dear, the L-word! The thunderstorm was huge and not very friendly: “Another aloof idea of the big city bohemians” or “In the country, given the distances, everyone is happy when they can finally drive a car from the age of 18”. Others joked about roofers cycling with three pallets of bricks. Every craftsman laughs “more than the Taliban when it comes to the question of women’s rights”. Hansen was surprised by all the “gasps”, “Guys, cool off.” It could be an alternative for some craftsmen, but none for others.
Green campaigners in Bavaria report: When the talk comes on the cargo bike, there is either shining eyes or screaming and murder. Rarely anything in between. Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock with her idea of a new funding program and CDU General Secretary Paul Zimiak with a brusque counter-speech had drawn up the guideline for the conflict, which is being drilled through locally.
It is a fermented mixture: On the one hand, there are critics of the Greens who think they are stepping back into the “Stone Age”. First cargo bikes instead of cars, then you sit in clay caves and use flint stones. You are basically looking for a new Veggie Day – a debate on emotions that is supposed to show the inability to choose. On the other hand, of course, the Greens like to defend their ideas with clever shit and forefinger.
Such penetrance is often experienced by cargo cyclists themselves, who are in no way inferior to car speeders. They thunder along with the battleship-wide things, brake so abruptly that the organic market purchase almost rolls out. Some flaneurs have to save themselves with long jumps suitable for national youth games – and still get a bad look of the kind: “Me cargo bike, you nothing!”
Green country chief Thomas von Sarnowski, himself a cargo cyclist (“practical, double with child”), says: “The CSU is asking a pragmatic question about the culture war.” Whereby the gasping for the L-Word does not only come from the CSU. Or even conciliatory from her. A funding program? You could “talk about it”. Recently said when asked: Federal Transport Minister Andras Scheuer.