The best commuting city ever

Köln (yes, if possible, this is the correct way to write and say it...confirmation by many sources, including my german teacher) is THE place to commute on a bike. The bike paths are on almost every sidewalk in the city and are coloured red to distinguish between the part for cars and/or pedestrians. All of the parts where you move to the sidewalk are ramped so there's no curb to deal with, and the bikes have priority over cars and pedestrians!

Axel has a 25 km ride to work everyday, which he decided was his way of starting cycling again after a 9 month hiatus of good hard cycling in Strasbourg. So far, I have yet to have him come home and tell me he didn't get lost on the way there and back. This is mostly due to the Rhine river crossing which he tries to avoid within the downtown core. This means that he needs to find the Rhine and then find a bridge to cross it, which means he needs to understand the signs, which means he has to learn a bit of german. Yesterday he discovered that East = öst so I think I may be seeing him a bit earlier tonight.

I have a 10-15 minute bike ride to german class. It's a really fun ride because I feel like I'm part of real commuter traffic with cars except we're all bikes. There are the speedy cyclists which ring passed you and crazy speeds (which isn't really necessary because I manage to see them at every red light). And there are the older, slower commuters who are just getting groceries. It's been 3 days for me and what is nice is that I have found a pace cyclist on all three days. She has a mountain bike with a multiple child chariot trailer in the back, 1 child seat in the front and another child seat in the back...and they are all filled with kids. 4 kids to be exact. She goes SO fast though, and passes people whenever she can. And I catch her halfway so my last 8 minutes of the commute is following this crazy mother haul a mess of kids around with the children swinging back and forth to the traffic.

I will try to get a picture tomorrow but I'm a little scared to go one-handed on the route since there are many things to dodge.

Yesterday I had a major faux pas cycling. I left the house at 8:45 (so I had to get my ass to class toute suite) so I biked hard and got there in 10 minutes instead of my usual 15, and ran up the stairs (it's on the 3rd floor), sat down, and almost passed out. I think my legs took all the blood from the rest of me. I had to open the window and fan myself but I was still really hot and faint and everyone in class noticed, so there was an emergency break to get me some water and sugar. This made for a very good segway for my teacher to introduce weeks and months since they found out I was pregnant and this was probably the reason I was feeling like this. Anyway, now the whole class knows how to say I am pregnant (ich bin schwanger, in case you ever need to know this german phrase).

And yes, german class is really fun. There are 5 people in my class from all over (one american, one polish, one brazilian, one english/georgian/russian, and me) and the polish woman knows no english so it's good for us to not use english as a crutch. The language is coming a lot easier than I expected, only because we are living in a house full of people who know I'm taking german and have made sure to converse with me throughout the week so test my skills and pronounciation. Deutsch lernen ist Spaß! (Learning dutch is fun!).