Bonjour à toutes et à tous!

At this point we could probably write a whole book, but we'll try to make it a little more condensed. Today, it is about the bicycle. Or to put it differently: Ride a bike! But first a warm welcome to the fifth issue of our small, but nice newsletter. Since May, we have sent out four editions (starting over, city escape, restlessness and being lazy) with the intention to take you away from the frantic, and yes, turbulent times of the present and take you out for a moment to think, listen, laugh or cry with us. We do this for you - without advertising - as a project from friends for friends. Here you will find our previous issues. If you like it, tell it to your family and friends, our little project is growing steadily.

“ Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

– Mark Twain

Musik N°1
Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Album)

In this newsletter, we have often pointed out that we are losing our ability to appreciate albums in their entirety and their tracks in the order they were intended. Kraftwerk's albums generally tend to be albums that suit this exercise well.

The quality of the album has been much debated (see laut.de, BBC or The Guardian). In our opinion its all nitpicking and we don't want to let ourselves get distracted by this at this point. Especially as a reasonable discussion of such an epochal band requires a few more lines than we have available here. So let's just rejoice that Kraftwerk were not only pioneers of electronic music, which can be so multi-faceted and beautiful, but also dedicated an entire album to cycling. Pretty cool, we think.

Musik N°2
SAULT - Little Boy

We have to interrupt our cycling tour for a moment for something important.
SAULT, a collective of artists from England, have released 35 songs, packed into two albums, in response to the murder of George Floyd. It is a stirring, shocking and sad assessment of a blatant social imbalance. But the songs help us, who can only guess how heavy the suffering and how crippling the humiliations must be, to gain insight into a world of emotions that is characterised by unbearable and lasting oppression and contempt. It is the breathtaking testimony of a bitter struggle for acceptance and equality. An incredibly strong manifesto for resistance and willpower. Damn powerful music.

From these two albums, Untiled (Black is) und Untitled (Rise), we chose the song Little Boy.

Amsterdam.

Children sit in the front of the cargo bikes and talk to their mom, who pedals powerfully, on the way to the kindergarten. This gives them time to laugh and chat together, no one has to worry about finding a parking space, red traffic lights and aggressive drivers in SUVs. Suit wearers rush by on the Gazelle. A pretty young woman transports her dog, happily sniffing in the wind, in the bicycle box on the back of the carrier of her Sparta bike. At the large intersections between the canals, up to 30 bikes gather in front of the small bicycle traffic lights. When the light turns green, they rush in a swarm past the Vondelpark towards the Rijksmuseum. They all ride at a moderate speed so that the flow of traffic does not come to a standstill due to risky maneuvers. Collective intelligence avoids the crash. In Amsterdam there is an unwritten law that should apply in all cities: The bicycle always has priority. The bicycle is the queen of the road.

Innsbruck.

It is a long way to the summit. The road stretches, motorbikes and the Porsche Club thunder past. The cyclist, however, fights against the elements and physics with purely natural forces. Ice, power bars and electrolyte drinks are his fuel. And the pancakes from the evening before.
Often it takes more than an hour just uphill, bend by bend, altitude meter by altitude meter. Arrived at the top, summit photo, fresh wind, enjoy the view. These are sublime moments, a little pride is evident when he looks down from up here onto the road he has just conquered. He has a little pity for the motorists. For them this moment must be so unequally rewarding. How could it be any different when there is only a 10 minute rattling ride between the valley and the summit? The expressions of pity are probably mutual. Now it goes down the mountain at a fast pace, breaking the sound barrier, breaking hard, leaning into the corner, again towards the sound barrier.
The coffee in the valley is waiting. It will be a good one, no matter what its taste. 

“Life is like a bicycle. You have to move forward in order not to lose your balance. ”

– Albert Einstein

City and bike.

When will the bicycle renaissance finally be reflected in the cities we design? In Germany, 50% of all traffic is under 5 km, a third is so-called parking search traffic. The average vehicle weight is 1,8 tons for an average person of 80 kilograms body weight! This is absurd and is increasingly no longer accepted.

Bicycles, on the other hand, do not take up as much space. Consequently, the territorial battle in the city will probably be won in the long run by the bicycle.

After all, we don't have to look far to see how cool it can be to have not only the bikes and the people, but also the infrastructure: Amsterdam, Copenhagen (an index for evaluating the bicycle-friendliness of a city is called the Copenhagenize Index), Antwerp, Oslo, Münster, Paris. Is it now because the German automobile industry is so powerful or have we simply slept through the last 60 years to initiate the transformation that can be seen in other cities? The ideal of the car-friendly city was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in the history of urban culture. We must move towards a city that is fair to its citizens! But we already wrote about cities in June.

Would you like to become directly active in bicycle politics now? Do you know the criticalmass or the Park ing Days? Fine thing, just google for the next dates in your city.

After years of the worst doping scandals there is again an increased interest in cycling (as Jan will prove later) and who can really say anything against cycling? But the question is also - how many of us are still too comfortable to change and still take the car to the organic market? It is also really fresh in the morning in September. But enough. We could continue to talk about all the things that are going wrong, such as 445 cyclists killed in accidents in 2019. Instead, we will simply use the incredible appeal of the bicycle and its stunningly positive charisma to continue to inspire you, get you on the bike, use it more often and fight for more cycling!

Let's fight with a positive spirit for not less than a mobility revolution. For many topics, the bicycle has once again become a source of hope: urban development, sustainable mobility and everyday health.

Musik N°3

Tour de France.

I still remember summer visits to the family in France, where the television was on from morning to night. Fighting and sweating men riding up steep mountains or flying past the camera in tight-fitting suits and pointed helmets. Incredible crowds of people shout at the men, whipping them up the street. The rattling of the broadcast helicopter is the soundtrack for breathtaking landscape shots. The tour is in full swing.

At that time this fascination remained incomprehensible and closed to me, but today I think I understand why the television was on (and still is, now in my own room). I don't need to explain this to cycling fans, they can skip the next paragraph. I'd like to recommend to them the Besenwagen Podcast and the Rouleur Magazine newsletter, two great formats.

For those who don't (yet) enjoy the sport, I have another idea: there is something incredibly meditative about watching cyclists ride their bikes. Admittedly, for the layman, such a Grand Tour race, the créme de la créme of cycling tours, is initially rather boring.

At first glance, it pretty much always the same thing: the riders start off somewhere in a large group, perhaps a few are in a bit of a hurry at the beginning, the reporters spend the next three hours talking shop about whether the so-called break away will make it to the finish line as such or whether the peloton, the large field, will go to collect the ones in front. Arriving at the finish line, someone has won, others get jerseys in different colors and the protagonists of this spectacle get a massage. Repetition follows the next day. For three weeks. Wonderful.

Tension peaks are seldom to be expected in the often five-hour and longer transmissions, but when they do, it explodes behind the reporter microphones. Attack here, attack there. But sit back and watch your adrenaline level. I had promised you meditation. Cycling is a complicated sport, and we don't want to let it drive us crazy at this point. Instead, we'll continue to let ourselves be pampered by beautiful panoramas, village stories and bizarrely shrill fans. You don't have to be really active to watch (as I said, you won't miss that much). Believe me, this is an experience.
Unfortunately, the tour is already over, but fortunately there are many more great bike races. Have a look at the Giro d'Italia or the Vuelta d'España!

But the best thing still is to get yourself on the saddle. Discover the world from your bike, you won't regret it.

With best regards from the bike

Felix & Jan

Musik N°4

The end.

This was our fifth newsletter. Did you like it? We welcome feedback, possible recommendations and also new subscriptions. In fact, no one else will know about this newsletter, as we do not advertise. So it remains only your recommendation. As the saying goes: subscribe now. Newsletters still have something of spam, advertising, coercion. Unfortunately, because we do not want to have anything to do with that. The email to the lettre is: newsletter@kollektivindividualismus.de. And on the internet you can still visit, hang out and marvel at our website.

We say see you soon and stay tuned.