So many bikes

There are so many bikes in this town. Just piles and piles of them everywhere you go. Forget finding a parking spot for your car - the real struggle can sometimes be finding a parking spot for your bike! If I come to work anytime after about 8.45, only the dregs of parkings spots are left: the crooked end of the bike rack, or on the hill where my weak, non-Finnish kickstand is likely to give out in the slightest gust of wind.

For the past two weeks I've been trying to get a good vantage point to take a picture of the extensive bikery on campus. Today I happened upon one by chance when I took the skybridge between Publicum and Educarium on campus. There are even more bikes than you can see in this frame - the roofed structure at bottom left continues and shelters many, many more bikes.

I love living in a place where bicycles are used as legitimate transportation! It makes life so much easier...and more full of fun and exercise. There are more than a few destinations in town where it is literally faster to get there by bike than by car, thanks to good bike path design (or poor road design, I suppose, however you want to look at it). Turku is a very bikeable city.