Car free family life in Germany

Ah, Deutschland! Land of the perfect pretzel, frequent trains to anywhere, and rolling pastoral landscapes. My first destination was Esslingen, a neighboring town to Stuttgart. I was greeted at the station by my friend Gabby. We both work for ITDP Europe. She had her two kids in tow, one in a kinderwagen (stroller) and the other on her back. So began my crash course in the car-free family lifestyle.

First we took the bus to her family garden on the edge of town. It’s common for German cities to make plots of land available for rent as gardens, called Kleingaerten, or allotment gardens. Usually they are unbuildable bits of land like oddly shaped parcels on the edge of town, or slopes, or along rail tracks. Since many Germans live in flats, they don’t have access to a garden plot, so these are offered for a low rent. At Gabby’s, we picked blueberries , johannesberries and plums.

Next day we went for a bike ride, with Alex and Katya riding in a bike trailer. Even though the Stuttgart region is heavily influenced by the presence of the Mercedes Benz headquarters there, we had a continuous system of bike trails to use, ultimately taking a path along the Neckar river. There are riverside bike paths in and between German urban areas, for instance, you can cruise along the Rhine Bicycle Route for over 800 miles.

Riverside trails are usually marked with signs telling you the distance to the next town center, and often there are cafes and restaurants catering to bike tourists. We stopped at one of these to enjoy the German tradition of afternoon café und kuchen (coffee and cake). Once sugared up, Alex switched to his laufrad (child’s 'running bike' with no pedals), and rode along with us. I made a video, which is below.

Gabby demonstrated her space-saving garage to me. It’s the size of a two-car garage, but the floor has a hydraulic lift that pushes the first two cars up and tilts them to allow another two cars to park on a second level.

Strollers are a really key part of urban car-free living with kids. My neighborhood in Hamburg was popular with young families, which inspired me to create a Strollers Per Block (SPB) index as an indicator of the child-friendliness of a neighborhood, (often it would be as high as 8 or 10 in Ottensen). So I took note of the stroller-friendly infrastructure aiding Gabby, such as a stairway with sloped surfaces for wheels on each side.