Denmark Diaries: Copenhagenised!

After a good week (and two ten-ride metro tickets), it finally happened: I have a bike in Copenhagen! Finding a used bike was more difficult than expected - most bike shops only sell new (and expensive) bikes, and trading used bikes via small ads and Facebook is possible, but not necessarily abundant. Given the size of the city and its cycling craze (40% of Copenhageners commute by bike, according to DRadio Wissen), I expected more.

In the end, I found what I was looking for at Second Hand Bikes Copenhagen (organised by students at the Technical University of Denmark), after having seen several offers in Facebook groups, where, as the conversation progressed, the gut feeling became increasingly clear that the bike for sale had been stolen and should change hands as soon as possible. So now I’m rocking through the streets of Copenhagen on a second-hand Dutch bike, enjoying the wind and cursing the stiff breeze that keeps blowing in from the sea. And apparently, after just a few minutes on my new bike, I looked authentically Danish: At a set of traffic lights on the way home, a Danish cyclist immediately asked how to get to a certain bridge. Copenhagenised!

(By the way: The headline is a reference to “Copenhagenize”, a relatively wide-reaching blog about urban cycling culture from Copenhagen.)