I recently biked for a couple of days through southwest Germany. I tried to follow the local bicycle routes leading from village to village and was surprised to encounter many situations where the bike lane was either suddenly continuing on the other side of a busy street, became a pedestrian lane, or simply ended in the middle of nowhere. This is high level complaining but I expected the bicycle infrastructure to be a bit more advanced.
by zecha123
6 Comments
Are you sure you were not in the UK?
And arguing with aggressive car drivers.
Indeed, recently did a big trip in Germany and we spent a large portion of it on busy rural roads. The bicycle infrastructure is pretty good compared to some countries but it is still quite patchwork. We had one incident where we heard a car trigger it’s ABS brakes behind us while they were trying to overtake on a blind curve in the road
I recently biked from Koblenz to Zurich, 800+ kms. Except for one part in E Saarland where we didn’t navigate well and did about 10am on a road with 70kph traffic we thought the bike infrastructure and ability to avoid busy roads was pretty good. About as good as in CH, we had mostly no complaints.
I went on a bikepacking trip with my brother last summer in the same region, and I found the bike lanes in Germany really hard to follow. It feels like you need to be a local to understand them. We ended up cycling on plenty of roads where cars were flying past at 80–100 km/h. Not very safe. Being Dutch, I guess I tend to complain quickly when it comes to infrastructure in other countries.
Looks like you almost described Poland, but without aggressive, speeding drivers that won’t let you cross the road