It’s been a year, since I have visited friends in Berlin, in order to say good-bye before heading off to study once more in Kyoto, Japan. I timed my last visit to go to the VeloBerlin 2011, too. I blogged about it, because I was fairly excited to go there. – It’s roughly another week till VeloBerlin 2012, and up to date I had never reviewed my experience, because there wasn’t much to be excited about.
I felt I really didn’t fit this consumer shows target audience, and the numerous band-wagon “fixies” from big suppliers such as ROSE made this even more apparent. Despite the solid overall styling of this ROSE bicycle, I got thrown off by its details.

Looking back the memory of this adhesive tape sums it up for me: hasty, shallow imposed cycling-culture. They had some nice bicycle training for kids going on, and I am sure some people enjoyed the over-abundance of e-bikes, expensive carbon and the sell-sell-sell stench in the air. This definitely is a good fair for some, but it surely ain’t my forte. So, here VeloBerlin 201X comes to an end for me, but if you’d like to give it a shot you can get tickets here.

My big thanks goes out to Keirin Berlin, who offered japanese culture, a good chat, as well as heart-shattering drip coffee and cookies by japanese native Rie. I also enjoyed seeing a walking legend Giovanni Pelizzoli, whose family used to own and build the frames marketed under the brand Ciöcc.

Back then I wasn’t aware off the Pelizzoli Leggenda hype, due to being busier with arranging my future in Japan. Hands down, this looks like reemerging phoenix of a once lived Cannondale Track from the 90′s, and I wasn’t sure if that was either awesome, or stupid. Here’s a nice write-up about the Leggenda at CycleExif, if you’d like to read more about it. Apart from the Leggenda, Pelizzoli offers more framesets or builds, and personally I find all of them very satisfying to look at. I guess owning one would feel even better, but right now I am starting to develop a strong weakness for that ALTEC frame!