“Cosmopolitan city with a heart” was once the slogan with which Munich wooed the world’s sympathies. Berliners tend not to be receptive to such things, because they generally prefer to hold back with expressions of sympathy. In this particular case, the friendliest thing they could wring from Munich was probably a saying like: “Cosmopolitan city? A joke!”
Who can blame the Berliners? From their perspective, Munich is rural and just as far behind the times as Mecklenburg, about which Chancellor Bismarck already knew that the world would end 50 years later there than in Berlin. How far Munich is lagging behind the current state of affairs can be seen in the current traffic policy: For a few weeks now, parts of Munich’s Leopoldstrasse – one of the central access roads – have been subject to a speed limit of 30.
What is progressive Berlin doing in the meantime? Dissolves a pedestrian and cyclist zone in Friedrichsstraße so that cars can drive there again, so after months of standstill, big-city life can return to the heart of the metropolis – that’s how urbanity works. Meanwhile, Munich is taking the penultimate or perhaps final step to completely adapt Schwabing to the boring sleeping suburb of Olching.
Munich first has to push cars out of the city in order to be able to bring them back at some point in the future. Berlin, as always at the cutting edge, can already afford to take this second step. Because, and the city recently had this confirmed again: cyclists live in paradise in Berlin anyway! One can easily allow oneself a little leniency with the motorists. If you think this is a joke, let me tell you: Copenhagen? Nonsense! Amsterdam? Never!! Munich? Hahaha!!! – No: Berlin is the most bicycle-friendly city in Europe.
This is the result of a current ranking by an online travel agency that would like to read its name in the press in connection with this ranking. It’s the online travel agency called – oh, never mind. It also doesn’t matter that Berlin emerged as the winner of the ranking. It could also have been Athens, Venice or Kiev. Just not Copenhagen or Amsterdam, because that’s to be expected, so boring.
And isn’t it true that Berlin has so many kilometers of cycle paths and so many bike-sharing stations than few other cities? Okay, Berlin is five times the size of most comparable cities, which it trumps by twenty kilometers of cycle paths and two bike-sharing stations. But there is also the lower elevation profile compared to Rome and the lower number of rainy days than in Helsinki. You just have to define the criteria accordingly so that the sensational winner you want comes out that you want – don’t trust any statistics that you haven’t falsified yourself. In any case, one wishes that the authors of this bicycle ranking would have to cycle along Oranienstrasse or Schönhauser Allee once a day.
Despite everything, Stefan Fischer likes to cycle through Schwabing.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (Illustration))