Bikes Everywhere!

The bike culture of Germany, Belgium, and especially the Netherlands is impressive.  In Germany, I started noticing separate lanes for bikes - often with a divider between the road and the bike lane.  Much safer than Pittsburgh, that's for sure.

As we continued northward, I noticed the emphasis on bikes more and more - parking lots of bikes, bikes chained to every available surface, and more.  Brugge had parking for bikes near a music event.  There was no parking for cars anywhere in sight.

But the Netherlands truly had bikes everywhere:

There are sidewalks for walkers separate from bike paths for bikes (and scooters apparently) separate from the road for cars - pretty impressive!

Many bikes have saddlebags since people use them to do their shopping:

And there are some truly huge parking lots for bikes:

This huge 2.5-level structure is a bike parking lot in Amsterdam near the train station.

Here's a close up of one end of the parking lot:

Bikes are also modified to transport multiple children (and apparently cost several thousand dollars):

It was also common for one person to be peddling a bike while another was sitting side-saddle on the back, although I didn't manage to get a photo of that.

I also loved this parking garage for bikes in Haarlem:

So take note, Pittsburgh, you may be bike friendly, but you've got nothing on these countries.