Yes, all three words are considered German, or some kind of German. The first is normal German, the second Bavarian/Austrian dialect (see future blog), and the third, believe it or not, is also German (check a future post on English in the German language!).Although I had a bike in England my three years there (1995-1998), I didn’t ride it nearly as much as I did when I lived in Salzburg. And since 1998, I can count the number of times I’ve ridden a bike on two hands (none in Venezuela, none in Pennington, only a bit this summer once Nikolas learned how to ride a bike).
The truth is, though, I LOVE riding my bike in Salzburg. I loved it as a student when I owned a “Waffenrad,” literally a bike from WWII. Its front brake pad pushed DOWN on the front tire, not on the rim, but ON the actual tire. Yes, there were some accidents. When I worked at the international school, I bought a City-Bike, a five-speed bike that was lime green with a streak of purple. I got new for 990 Schilling or about $99.
Salzburg is a great city for biking. Whether minutes out of the city center or in the Altstadt, it’s so easy and quick to bust in and out of places. As a student, I’d cross the field on a path across the Moos, a wide field south of the city, and just stop for a while to look at the Untersberg or at the Festung. Now Jenny and Nikolas are hooked, I think. Jenny has a bike she likes, Nikolas has his little bike, too. Also, we now have a bike seat for Nikolas (thanks, Uncle Amazon.de) and he totally digs the scene and the scenery!
As proof to myself that I’ve become more responsible, I have to get a headlight for my bike. It’s actually the law in Austria, but many times, people prefer not to ride with the light on because the generator, which rests on a wheel, slows the bike down due to the friction. I used to switch the generator off any chance I got, but now I find myself missing the ability to see in front of me. Of course, I don’t ride with Nikolas at night, so it’s only my head and skin that I’m worried about.Our storage space in the basement is full of bikes, left over from the students in the program last year. This may be a tradition I started actually in 1991 when my exchange year came to an end. I suggested to my resident director that my landlady probably wouldn’t mind our program kids stashing their bikes behind her barn. It had never happened before. Kids either sold their bikes or abandoned them. These past two weeks, I’ve been trying to tighten up bolts here, change seats there.
We had Sperrmülltag (big garbage day) on September 1 when people are allowed to throw away huge pieces of garbage like couches and desks and bikes. So I snagged a couple of bikes in the throw-away piles in our neighborhood and have been harvesting parts in order to improve the bikes we have. It’s more of a project than I thought it would be, but I’ve learned or relearned a lot, too. Eighteen years ago I actually knew how to change tires, patch tires, and fix brakes!
