Cyclist union, a Zagreb NGO that promotes bicycles as a preferred, healthy alternative to cars as means of urban mobility and lobbies for a more bike friendly infrastructure in the city, has organized a three day festival of cycling Pedalafest! The NGO is bringing bicycle experts from all over the world to share their experiences with bikes and urban mobility, and adds a bunch of concerts to spice things up.
Pedalafest is taking place from June 2nd until June 4th at Ribnjak park and Mocvara club. The entire program, as the organizers say, is dedicated to bringing a positive and healthy atmosphere to the city.
‘Pedalafest is a labor of love, done completely on a volontery base, without any funds or payments going to the organizers or our guests, and with a little finacial help from the city, Danish and Holland embassies and our sponsors who all love cycling. This makes Pedalafest a unique event in Europe. In the next three days we’ll introduce people to a variety of traffic experts, urban planners and activists from all around, who will share their experiences and issues they had to face in their cities trough a variety of lectures and panel discussions. Some of the themes that will be touched upon are systems of public bikes, usage of freight bikes, cycle tourism and transforming cities into more humane and people friendly places’, said Tena Saric, one of the organizers, while announcing the start of the festival on Thursday, June 2nd at 7 pm.
Experts from Slovenia, Austria, France, Holland, Denmark, Hungary, Serbia and Macedonia have been announced, as well as Graham Cavanagh from New York who worked on transforming giant traffic avenues into pedestrian zones in that city, and who’s lecture will open that part of the festival at 7:30 pm on Thursday.
‘One of the things people wil be able to see during the festival are a variety of cycle themed movies, and the power needed for their screenings will be produced by cycling, courtesy of Cycle Cinema Club from Vienna’, added Saric.
During daytime the program will be filled with performances, workshops, fashion bike shows and other bike related activities, while evenings are reserved for concerts and DJs. The festival ends with a traditional critical mass bike ride, a semi protest, semi awareness rising bike parade trough the city the Cyclist Union organizes each year. The ride will start at 7 pm on Saturday from Ribnjak park and will head to Mocvara club where the final party is being held.
If you’d like to joint the ride on Saturday, Zagreb has a number of public bikes spots around the center from where you can get bikes for a small fee.
To learn more (on English language) about the activities, lectures, programs and parties, go to Pedalafest’s official site HERE.
