Le Prince: September 2010

It’s been a while since the last update. We visited the Eurobike 2010 last week at Friedrichshafen, Germany. Eurobike is the largest event of the bicycle industry in the World. It is held annually late august or early September. Four days of beautiful bicycles, parts, bags, clothes, you name it. First three days are for the media and trade visitors and on the last day of the exhibition the gates are open to the public as well.

Friedrichshafen is located by the Bodensee, which is a lake surrounded by Switzerland, Austria and Germany. The easiest way to get there is to fly to Zurich and take a train and a ferry to Friedrichshafen. It takes about three hours. If you are a trade visitor, there is a free shuttle bus connection straight to Friedrichshafen.

If you are planning to visit Eurobike next year, remember to book your accommodation in advance. We didn’t do that and our hotel was located at the village of Isny im Allgau which was 60 km’s from the exhibition grounds. There are free bus connections to nearby villages, but our hotel was not in one of these places. We had to hire a car and our expected beer consumption dropped at least 80%.

Before Eurobike we spent a day in Zurich. Most of the (trendy) bicycles we saw in Zurich were 90’s road bikes. We spotted only one fixed gear rider in the City. It must be the hilly roads that reduce the amount of fixed wheelies over there.

Eurobike 2010 presented a wide range of different kind of bicycles and bicycle-like products. As far as I am concerned the anti- Highlights of the Eurobike were the leather covered bicycle and the “multisex-bicycle”.

There was a cool mix of different kind of fixed gear bikes. Dodici had the biggest influence on me. They didn’t have a stand of their own, but they walked around the exhibition area with their bikes.