Climbing from Stuttgart to my home village yesterday after getting off the train. Stuttgart is built largely in a couple of fairly narrow valleys and in the ten kilometres (6 miles) from the railway station to our village there’s about 200m or 650 feet of climbing. I can now reliably inform you that from bottom to top takes about thirty minutes of riding, pushing and complaining.

I know what you’re thinking:

“But this is Germany, surely there are trams or something that would carry your bike up that hill in a matter of minutes?”


Indeed there are, dear reader, indeed there are. In fact, there is a tram line running right next to this photo location.

So why was I cycling?


Answer: your correspondent had forgotten that there is a ban on bicycles on trams from 4 to 6:30pm, spent too long with some former work colleagues in Stuttgart, and had turned up at the tram stop too late to be permitted on board…