The United Bicycles of Europe

I just got home from a visit to Brussels and Amsterdam. In Brussels I was attending the Velocity 2009 conference about bicycle culture. I'll be posting about it later at Copenhagenize.com but I'll spare all you bikeistas the details. The important thing here is that I met heaps of cool people - through this blog - and could finally put alot of faces to a lot of names.

It was non-stop chatter at the City of Copenhagen stand and when I needed a break I'd head out back to the loading docks of the conference centre. Just before leaving the building there was a cool Belgian NGO called Cyclo and I hit it off with Jean-Philippe, Vincent and Abdal. They had loads of bicycles for people to try and I would invariably borrow one or the other to ride around a bit, smoke a cigarette and relax before heading back into the fray.

Nearby there was a massive, empty building - an old market - and I thought it so cool that I brought others with me for a ride.

Here's the film about it. The music is Coeur de Pirate, whom I saw live in Brussels last Tuesday. You'll might remember them from an earlier post about their lovely bicycle music video. What a coincedence they where playing in town. A smashingly soulful concert. They went number one on ITunes in Belgium the day they were playing so there was an extra good atmosphere.

In the video there are good people from Belgium, Catalunya, Denmark, Germany, UK and a Canadian living in Sweden. Regular people in regular clothes on a variety of bicycles. But as we all know by now, it's not about the bicycle, it's about YOU on the bicycle.