When my sister moved to Hamburg last year, one of the first encouters with her new city of choice was that someone chose to steal her bike. As it was an unusual bike, maybe the thief was as confident as police were that they would find it and decided to take it back after sleeping over it.

The thief who stole Hans-Christian Stroebele’s bycicle last week apparently wasn’t quite as concerned about selling his booty. Via German MP Jakob-Maria Mierscheid’s blog I just learned that Hans-Christian has been united with his bike – a bycicle messenger recognized it on a local flee market and just bought it back for the rightful owner…

And the bottom line of this story? We don’t need increased electronic surveillance of public space. We need more cycling, attentive citizens. Sure, the former is a lot easier to achieve than the latter, but it’s also a lot less effective. QED.