As I'm writing this, the street outside of my apartment has been closed to traffic and taken over by hundreds of cyclists, leaving lines of frustrated motorists standing behind police blockades while happy healthy people whizz past, safe in the knowledge that just for today, they are kings of the road.

As a cyclist nothing is more inviting than an empty street and today the streets are free, for today is Berlin's car-free day. It is this kind of thing that endears Berlin to me and, were my bike not safely ensconced in my parents' cellar back in England, I would be on the street, too.

The attitude of Germans to the bicycle is admirable and goes back a long way. If you watch Bertolt Brecht's 1933 film Kuhle Wampe, the thing that is immediately striking is how everyone in the film has a bicycle. The opening 10 minutes consists of a stylised 'race for work' through unemployment-ridden Berlin with hundreds of workers gathering before setting off en masse and on two wheels. While car ownership was admittedly lower back then, the idea of having a bicycle is still decidedly German. On the film's Russian release, the bicycles were edited out because it was taken to be unrealistic. Russian workers didn't have bicycles and the powers that be decided that the culture shock might be too great.

Back in the present, everyone is being encouraged to either cycle, walk or use Berlin's public transport, which is more than adequate. Berlin is a city where a car is more an inconvenience than an asset, in my mind a good thing. There are people who see car ownership is a personal right, a status symbol and something to aspire to -- yet I find cars obtrusive, unpleasant and just plain awkward in a city. Here, every spare railing has a metal frame and two wheels locked to it. Bikes come in all shapes and sizes, from barely roadworthy constructions utilising second hand wheels, no brakes and selotape to finely tuned racing machines which zip through the traffic as fast as the cars.

The difference between Berlin and Britain from a cyclist's perspective is almost too good to believe. Back at home in Edinburgh, the city council refused to re-mark cycle lanes in the city centre because it supposedly damaged the character of the area. Cyclists are at the mercy of lorries and buses and accidents are frequent, ensuring that the number of people cycling as part of their everyday routine remains minimal. Here in Berlin, almost every major road has a cycle lane running alongside it and the city authorities seem able to grasp the concept that cycling is a healthy and useful component in the transportation masterplan.

While I don't advocate this as a solution to the dilemma of climate change, there are Berliners who take the downfall of the gas-guzzling polluting car to an extreme by simply setting fire to them. Here there is a wonderful tradition of burning cars, which are deemed by the perpetrators to be too powerful, polluting or just downright flash. In the run up to car-free day, 15 were set on fire in one night -- there is a website where you can read about the latest incidents. For the naïve business executive who leaves their Audi on the street in Kreuzberg, a nasty surprise awaits. The radical green movement in Germany is such that incidents of direct action are a regular occurrence and moreover, gain a reasonable degree of public approval.

Thanks to the climatic conditions of the north German plain, ensuring the entire area from Holland to Kaliningrad heats up like a greenhouse, car fumes get stuck in the windless air and hot days can just be unpleasant. Likewise, sitting on the U bahn or the S bahn are uncomfortable once the temperature hits around 25 degrees Celsius and any journey can be something of an ordeal. The solution? Hop on your bike and let the air rush past your face. You'll never look back.

-- Dominic Hinde