I was right to be paranoid about the 240 euro bike. Leaving it outside my Prenzlauer Berg abode, in a bike stand for two weekend nights, I return to find it keeled over. After unlocking it, I find the back wheel has buckled. Bang goes my 150 euros resale.

Not so. The bike man at spezialrad.de bike shop, or fahrradstadt, is ever-so helpful, and immediately pushes it back into shape, studiously twisting and reprogramming the spokes to engineer the perfect turning circle.

He tells me that at weekends, some kids have an excess of “criminal energy”, and it has become a bit of a sport for them to stamp on bikes lying prone, and alone, in stands such as mine. It’s a mild crime compared to the unruly, armed feral youths in London, for whom the vandalism of stamping on a bike wheel is but fare for toddlers.

Unfortunately, and rather embarrassingly, I have cycled through some dog scheisse – an everyday hazard in Berlin, especially given the size of the dogs and the fact they run free, nicht lead. The wheel is turning right before Stefan’s very nose.

He recounts a tale, about how one day he had been biking through puddles, only to get home and smell dog scheisse. He checked his clothes, his boots, but no trace of the evil dirt. Dreizig minuten later,  still somewhat befuddled, he looked in the mirror and spotted a fleck  right under his nose.

“I’d had my mudguards removed and it sprayed up … I always call them scheisseguards now.”

The anecdote was as free as the repair job. He didn’t charge me. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Life’s too short. See you Thursday.”

This man is a God. He can probably walk on water, as well as cycle on it.

* Photo courtesy of artsy Lucy Hull

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Prenzlauer Berg on trendy Kastianenalle – a boulevard of kitsch designer shops, boutiques, cafes, bars and pizzerias – doesn’t wake till at least 10, when most kaffes slowly open their doors, agonisingly slowly when you are busting for a coffee. It gives the impression that everyone is still asleep until at least 11, when the freelance rush hour starts. There is another rush hour of sorts going on – a steady stream of bikes heading into Mitte, mums and kids on the school run.

But it’s a school run with a difference, en velo. Children are packed int an assortment of ferrying devices: a saddle and foot shelves welded on the crossbar; bikes with kinder saddles over the back wheel; bikes with covered trailers towed behind; or the supposedly de rigeur new Dutch import – a wooden box at the front, bigger than an old market porter’s bike, welded to the front, a sort of mobile playground for kids, big enough to carry three or four under-5s.

Rise at 8am and the traffic is all mamas und papas, taking kids to the kindergarten. I say kindergarten because Pramslauer Berg seems to have a preponderance of kids under 5. Few, if any, are older.

“It’s all down to the trendy web and designer types who moved here in their 20s, about 10 years ago,” says Matilda, the waitress at one coffee shop that does open at 8am. “They grew up, got girlfriends, got married, and had kids. Now Penslauer Berg has so many kids under 5 it’s unreal.

“Prenzlauer lost its edge.”

She is being kind. Prenzlauer Berg is one big playground, for kids; teeming with teething tots or toddling toddlers. A Sunday here is like strolling along the nursery slopes in the Alps. Never mind the uneven or cobbled pavements, the trams, the bikes, the cars – it’s kids you need to avoid.

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Everyone cycles in Berlin. It’ s flat, save for a few rubble mountains sculpted from all the war rubble, with plenty of cycle lanes and a laidback attitude to cycling on pavements. Bike theft is not a problem judging by how people lock up their bikes. People just put it on its stand and lock a wheel. It’s just another easily apparent instance of a better quality of life that Germans, even in their supposedly vice-ridden urbane capital, enjoy over Londoners and Brits in general.

Bikes can be rented for about 10 euros a day, or down to six euros a day for a prolongued hire. Try Lila Bike at Schonhauser Allee 41 (+49176  611  24 909) or the Berlin chain known as Fahrrädstation, which will hire one for €100 euros  a month, mitt hefty deposit. Next door on Schonhauser, there’s Bike Piraten, which buy, sell and repair cycles. You can grab one for €50, if you have an ass like concrete and you want to wobble around Berlin on a decrepit death trap.

If you are here for a month, though, it’s best to buy one, then flog it back to the shop. Most will oblige. I plan to use mine a lot, so I grab an expensive one from a reputedly good dealer, like Fahrradladen on Lychener Strasse.

It specialises in old bikes and doing them up, like old Dutch bikes (currently in vogue in Berlin). They don’t come cheap. the cheapest is about €160, though Angelo will buy it back for say €90, depending on das wear and tear. I do the maths, and, depending if I don’t get it stolen, I plump for a green Apache mountain bike, with a basket fitted in the back. It cost €235, but he will buy it back for 160. Bargain, if i don’t lose it or wedge it under a tram!

There is one glitch – the basket at the back makes it virtually imposible to cock your leg over and mount, without lookign like a tired geriatric with stiff legs. There’s also the paranoia.

Having a bike alost twice as expensive as your two-wheeler in London makes you a tad edgy. Angelo says that although bike theft is not unheard of, and that Berliners have two bikes -  ein scheisse one for the pub, and a good one for Sundays – it’s best not to leave it outside the U-Bahns, unless you have a good lock. Watch out for courtyards, too, he says: “Their dark, and where good bikes go missing.”

Thanks, I’ll have the triple safe steel lock with the rottweiler guard dog attached, please.

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