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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Prenzlauer Berg, and all of central Berlin come to think of it, is a cafe society. Cafes are everywhere, full, it seems, most times of the day. Hardly surprising given that half the town seems to be freelancing; editing, designing, web-producing, screenplay writing, screenplay designing – I’ve lost count of freelance filmmakers, writers, journos, playwrights, and designers I’ve shared a quick chat with over ein kaffe bitte.

Everyone is freelance, including Ricardo, an italian journalist filtering out yarns about the Berlin capital. “I on’t know anyone here with  ull-time job,” he says, pating his dog nder the table at Cafe Liebling, a trendy wifi-friendly coffee and cake shop in Dunckertsrasse, on Helmholtz Platz.

With all this freelancing, with its intermittent pay and limited conditions (ie none), people seem to have little or no money. Funny then they hang around in cafes where a coffee is €2 a pop. The answer is, order once, and pay once, but sit there all day. Hardly a great business model for cafe owners who are probably as poor as their customers.

I glance over at my bike; there’s a five-year-old looking at it. Leave. The. Bike. Alone, my mind thinks. My expression works on a different premise. I smile at the mum, as if saying, “aaaah, how cute”. Glad mum doesn’t realise I’m really thinking, “if your kid so much as attempts to bolt crop my steel-reinforced padlock and dose the rottweiler next to it with rohipnol or poisoned meat chunks, I shall have words!”

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