Easy Riding

March 26, 2022

My Trek 2

Easily the best purchase I made living in Poland is my Trek 2 bike. Having a decent bike available makes running errands, or going to the city center a joy! The autobusses in Krakow are excellent, but to get to my favorite pub by autobus takes about 30 minutes. By bike, I am at the pub finishing my pint in the same amount of time. Car traffic in and around Krakow is brutal and so traveling by car is an “only as necessary” decision. I only wish I would have purchased my bike sooner.

Biking in Krakow

Krakow is a friendly bike city, the bike paths and bike lanes are plentiful, and the motorist do seem to watch out for bikes. There are a few key things to watch out for though.

  1. Some crossings are marked with red paint, and some only white paint. If you hit an intersection with only white paint, you are required to walk your bike across the street, not ride it. The bike police (they exist) do watch for this (we got caught once).
  2. “Drunk riding” is “Drunk driving” in Poland and you can loose your driver’s license if you are caught riding your bike intoxicated. I am not sure how that works for American’s without a Polish driver’s license, but I also don’t want to find out.
  3. Pedestrians are the biggest thing to watch out for. In the heavy walking areas there are painted lanes for bikes, but people don’t really pay attention and can mindlessly walk into these lanes.

Biking Around Poland

It’s really easy to take your bike on a train (although you need to purchase a special ticket for your bike) and explore different areas. Every place we have visited has had great biking trails and city centers that are bike friendly. There are also wonderful forest dirt paths you can ride for miles and miles. For the more daring, there are many extreme trails, but I haven’t tried them.

On a recent visit to Warsaw we decided at the last minute to take our bikes and it was a great decision. First, there are great forest paths just outside the city that would have made the decision to bring our bikes worth it. The city proper however was also great with bike lanes just about everywhere. Getting around the downtown area by bike was incredibly easy and enjoyable. Highly recommend.