Call a Bike: Useless for the Casual Tourist

There’s a rent-a-bike scheme here, and a few other German cities, run by the Deutsche Bahn during the warmer months of the year. Cleverly named Call a Bike, it works on the principle of having bikes randomly around the city that you can just grab when you need one… say, when it’s 3am and you’re not sure you can walk straight enough to get to the next U-bahn station.

The principle is sound enough, and it’s fine for locals, but I don’t think it functions so well for the tourists who could really benefit. This is how it works:

1. You have to sign up at the website or via phone. The website to sign up on is only in German, and if you don’t have a German address or identity card, you’re going to have to sign up via phone anyway. But not the normal number… a different number printed really small at the bottom of the English summary page.

2. Once you go through all that you’ll get debited 5€ from your credit card or German bank account. Rental costs start being removed from that when you use a bike, but as far as I can tell you don’t get any left over cash credited back to you when you leave the city.

3. Renting a bike needs a mobile phone. When you’re standing in front of a bike you have to call a number to get the unlock code; when you’re finished using it you lock it, receive a receipt code, call the number AGAIN and tell them the receipt code and where you’ve left it. All this, of course, requires having a mobile on you which works in Germany and doesn’t cost you what a taxi would just to make the call.

So I’m highly sceptical of the system for a tourist. If you’re here for a minimum of a month (only over spring/summer of course) and have a German phone or good international rates then it may be something for you. Otherwise I’d suggest trying one of the rent a bike a day places which can be found around Alexanderplatz or using public transport. In the worst case you can always walk.