Berlin January 2018

A small group of ‘Oldvelos’ visited Berlin recently for the 102th  anniversary of the running of the Berlin Six Day race. The racing was as entertaining as we expected and we found tucked away in a corner of the velodrome an interesting display of vintage bikes. Included in the display was an unusual tandem where both the captain and stoker could steer!

We were not quite sure what issue they were trying to solve with this arrangement but it was certainly an interesting bit of mechanics. Maybe the idea was that one of the riders could take a quick nap during lulls in the racing!

Of course no visit to Berlin would be complete without calling by our old friends in ‘Steel-Vintage’. We had a most enjoyable breakfast there which went on for at least four hours. We were also treated to a few of the restorations that will be available for sale in the near future. My advice to any enthusiast would be to start saving your money as there is some very tasty hardware coming down the line from SVB.

We also made some new friends during our visit.

Günter Rottler is living Bonn and he told us about his local bike shop in  Köln run by a former professionals Karl Heinz Kunde (Peugeot-BP) and Rolf Wolfshohl who rode for the Mercier team in the 1960’s.

Herr Wolfshohl  still has one of the beautiful purple Mercier Stronglight/Mafac/Simplex equipped bikes on display in the shop. Günter offered to do an article for this website on these interesting characters. Unfortunately when he starting his research he discovered that that Herr  Kunde had recently passed away. Another bit of cycling history is probably now lost forever.