The bike of Dorina Pojani

After a number of minor accidents during her early days in Delft, she says things have gotten better. “I never engage in acrobatics like no hands riding or trying to fit in narrow spaces between two moving delivery trucks,” she says.

Name: Dorina Pojani (Albania, Urbanism, Postdoc)

Price: Around €300

Brand: Giant

Striking Feature: 21 gears

That’s a good thing, because Pojani loves her bike. “It’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s the first bike that is all mine. I always had to share or borrow a bike before.” She describes the bike as a cross between a city and mountain bike. And although it has 21 gears, she says she only uses one.

Pojani lives in Delft and makes her daily commute to work on her red and silver bike. “My Dutch colleagues say that I bike so slow I defy gravity,” she says. “My commute takes me about 20 minutes each way but a Dutch coworker, who is also my neighbor, claims that he gets to work in just five minutes by bike.”

Cycling is one of the things Pojani likes the most about life in the Netherlands. But she does have a word of warning for newcomers. Aside from the risk of your bike being stolen, Pojani says your bike can also be removed by parking police if you park in inappropriate places. “It happened to me this summer at the Delft train station,” she says. “One evening, I returned from a work trip and the bike, which I had tied to a post with a thick chain that morning, had vanished.”

After some investigating, Pojani learned that her bike ended up at the Fiets Depot in Den Haag. “It costs €25 to retrieve the bike but the service is impressive,”states Pojani. “As soon as the bike is clamped, a photo is taken and placed on the website along with data such as the make, the colour, the frame number, etc. That way you can recognize your baby among the thousand inmates at the depot. They even offer you coffee while you’re waiting for the paperwork to be processed!”