Originally Posted by
acidfast7
No. You always refer to your excellent bike as a 200 EUR (400 DM) bike from Real, which is quite irrelevant these days.
I like your bike, personally. I think it's a great purchase, however, I think referring to a purchase price in DM is pretty lame (especially when you make the 2:1 conversion which didn't hold true in the end).
It's would be like me quoting $2:£1 ratio.
My reference isn't weird at all ... maybe you had a knock-off brand but you did post pictures of your bike with a sweet (seriously!) child seat ...
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=R%...w=1567&bih=788
maybe you left Europe before the Römer Jockey became the
de facto standard in rear child seats?
like I said, I like your bike, I love the rear child seat ... I hate how you dump on my bike and refer to DM and a 2:1 conversion to EUR when discussing bikes.
The only bike pic with a child seat I ever posted was taken 1983 (before I ever set foot in Germany) of me and my twins on my 1972 Raleigh Sports, which was purchased new for $82 in Philadelphia. My older daughter left the Raleigh on a parking rack in Freiburg in 2002 when she finished her classes at the University and left Germany.
My regular German commuters were/are a 1999 Vaterland 3speed purchased at my local Opel dealer for 400DM (equivalent at the time to about $210), and a 2000 7speed IGH Ragazzi purchased at Real for 268DM (equivalent at the time to about $135). I did buy one bike for a daughter in Euro at about €550 from the same Opel dealer, and at the time a dollar was worth slightly more than a Euro
I can go out today and buy an equivalent to your so called BSO for about $100 at Walmart, and I would expect less problems than you have encountered over such a relatively short time and distance. That is why I described your bike as you do, though I think you paid waaay too much if you were looking to set a cost standard for inexpensive short distance bicycling transportation.
Whether anyone else interested in commuting and saving money concurrently would buy the type of bike you chose at the price you paid is a question I cannot answer.