After waiting for more than a year I’ve finally got myself an e-bike which should make commuting to and from the city much more comfortable and not require a lot of extra showering. The weird thing is, I only sat on such a bike once (!) before knowing that I really wanted to have one. The feeling of your muscle power being enhanced is just so amazing! Think back when you as a child first used a tackle for the first time, add a sense of speed to that, and you’ll be pretty close to the feeling you get from an e-bike.
So which one did I get? I got a KTM ZEG Cento 10 (2022) which is basically a modified KTM Machina Tour CX610. Sadly I cannot provide you a link to my bike as the KTM website only has the 2021-edition listed right now. The new one is really that new and was delivered to the ZEG partners only last week 😅
So far I’ve only went around 10 km with it but I loved every second of it!
Now a bit of context: For the last couple of year’s I’ve been thinking really hard about what my perfect mobility setup would look like. It always involved a bike for things that are within a 10-20km radius and ideally an e-bike so that I wouldn’t get there totally exhausted.
Regional and national
In addition to the bike I’d always have a yearly public transport ticket in whatever place I’d be living in. Last year, the Austrian government finalised the work on such a ticket that would be valid for all of Austria. That so-called “Klimaticket” will allow me to use all local public transport systems available in every Austrian city and travel within the country using any ÖBB train. While taking your bike with you on trains is not free, it’s cheap and there’s usually enough space especially on the regional trains (“S-Bahn”) to make it comfortable. Getting that “Klimaticket” will be my next step.
I cannot describe how much I’m looking forward to just packing my bike onto a train to, for instance, Salzburg and ride around there without having to worry about what kind of ticket I need to get, which train to reach simply because it won’t matter anymore.
Going international
International travel is not included in the Klimaticket but ÖBB offers some very comfortable night trains called “Night Jets” that I plan to use as soon as there’s once again an in-person FOSDEM conference in Brussels or I want to spend some days in Paris again 😁
I miss traveling so much but with this approach I hope I can make it happen again and keep it eco-friendly!
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