A couple of weeks ago, I asked here if I should buy a touring bike in Japan and ship it to my bike tour starting destination (Hamburg, Germany). The consensus was to buy in Germany, and many of you gave a wide range of places to pick one up in Hamburg. So that's what I did. Here's what I learned:
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Consider the size of the people in the place you're buying the bike. In Japan, I couldn't buy a pair of shoes, since they were all too small. In Germany, it was hard to find a touring bike, as most of them were too big. Decathlon, mentioned by many of you as the place to buy an inexpensive new touring bike, only had Men's Large, for example.
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Consider the style of bike in the place you're buying. In Northern Europe, I learned too late, most people favor a certain style of flat bar "city" bike, often with internal gear hubs (not front and rear derailleurs). My preference is for drop bar bikes, the ones more common in the US, UK, and Southern Europe. I decided I'd still buy one in this style, but it wouldn't be my forever tourer, further limiting my budget.
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Consider the challenges of buying a used bike. I couldn't find any new bikes in my size and price range in Hamburg. The cheapest I found in stock was around $1,400 USD, which was over my budget. So I decided to go used. I signed up for the website many of you mentioned, https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/, and contacted a few folks in Hamburg with bikes for sale. The problem was, none of them lived in central Hamburg, where I was. They were all an hour away by public transit, in different directions. And they could only meet at night, as most people worked. At most, I could see one bike per day. And none of them were really touring bikes. There were some great touring bikes in Munich, but, unlike Japan, rail tickets didn't cost the same regardless of when you booked them, and a last minute round trip ticket there to check out a bike could cost over of $200. Yikes.
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Consider the challenges of having a bike tuned up. Eventually I found and bought I bike that I thought would be good enough for the tour. But like most used bikes, it needed some work. It creaked when I pedaled (thought it was the pedal, turned out to be the BB), and the rear brake didn't work. Now what? Most bike repair places wanted you to make an appointment in advance, and most were booked a couple of weeks out. I was leaving on my tour in a couple of days. I finally found a place that could look at my bike same day, but they spoke no English, so explaining the issues was hard, and they ended up charging me a lot of money without fully fixing the bike.
The bottom line, which I know is obvious: As I was already travelling when I got the idea to do a bike tour, I didn't have the option of building one up at home first. But this is clearly the better option. No matter how much a pain it is to get the bike boxed and unboxed, you're going to have to get lucky to find the right bike in Europe, at least on a budget.
by No_Mix_6813
2 Comments
General rule I’ve discovered is that North American brands tend to put drop bars on their touring bikes, while European brands tend to do flat bars. Something like Kona or Trek will fufill the drop bar requirement for touring bikes, for these you might need to look for shops that deal with those brands you might be interested in. Like I know Kona and others will list their dealers on their website. Not as common in Europe as the European competitors in many cases.
I was committed to a specific brand and model, flew to Netherlands and shopped around at various dealers that did that bike brand and managed to snag it in my size thankfully.
Touring bikes indeed are commonly using flat bars in Europe, but you could’ve just gone for a gravel bike, no? Decathlon has an ok one for 750€.
Buying used is always a risk. Seller screwed you by not disclosing the flaws.