Transcript exported from the video version of this episode - Note that it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:29
Ashton Schottler
From your perspective as a mom? You know, I want our sons to grow up in a community where they feel empowered and dependent and safe. And, you know, the flip side of that is, is that, like as a mom, I'm not going to be taxing my children to practices. They can grow by themselves on their bicycle. They can go out with their friends and go to the ice cream shop and go to the bakery and go to school.

00:00:30:17 - 00:00:37:29
Ashton Schottler
And again, I have more freedom as a mom because I'm not spending hours of my day shuttling my children.

00:00:38:06 - 00:00:59:19
Jonathan Schottler
But I think people need to look at all these people trying to get around by bicycle and understand, you know, it could be a father or mother, a brother or sister or a son. So somebody like these are people who are trying to get around them. If they're upset that they're on bicycles on the road, then these drivers should also be helping ask for change, push for separated bike lanes.

00:00:59:19 - 00:01:07:23
Jonathan Schottler
And if they choose to use their vehicle, which is totally fine, then they can now be on a road that is separated from the bike paths and we can all live together in harmony.

00:01:08:12 - 00:01:37:22
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and that is Ashton and Jonathan Schottler from the Black Forest Family YouTube channel. And we're talking about creating a culture of activity from the context of a German village in Germantown. I'm really excited about this, so let's get right to it with Ashton and Jonathan. Enjoy, Ashton and Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:01:38:21 - 00:01:39:27
Ashton Schottler
Thank you for having us on.

00:01:39:27 - 00:01:51:18
John Simmerman
Thank you. What I love to do with my guest is just give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the audience. So let me turn the floor over to you to ladies first.

00:01:52:05 - 00:02:27:18
Ashton Schottler
Okay. Yeah. So my name's Ashton. If you haven't caught our channel before with the BlackBerry family, my face is usually the one who's mostly on YouTube, Although, like, we try to do videos, too, where Jonathan joins me or he does a few solo videos here and there. But my background professionally or from an education perspective is I have a masters in architectural studies and then middle last year I wrapped up a Ph.D. in human geography at the University of Freiburg here in Germany.

00:02:27:18 - 00:03:03:29
Ashton Schottler
So essentially what a lot of my work in academia has focused in on is the intersection of political, economic and urban development. So my dissertation, for example, looked at how the low income housing tax credit actually changes the ways in which developers develop loans and housing within cities, how it incentivizes them to build, how it disincentivizes to build, and how that affects the geography of where low income people will live within the city.

00:03:03:29 - 00:03:52:04
Ashton Schottler
Because as you've explored in your channel with many of the topics that you've touched upon, where someone lives has a direct impact on so many outcomes for their life, as well as things like job opportunities and schools for their children. And so professionally, that was kind of my background. And then I, I've taught at the university level in the US and Germany, and so in a interesting way, I think for me what starting this YouTube channel was able to provide is sort of another platform to continue that, like researching education featuring parts of my brain, but by talking about topics that look more or less at the intersection between like Germany and the United States

00:03:52:04 - 00:04:23:19
Ashton Schottler
or different European nations in the United States and how they tackle everything from urban planning to politics to government, working on how they design cities and cycling infrastructure. And yeah, we've we've kind of covered a whole range of different topics on our channel, but I think all of them sort of surround this idea of all of the different elements of a go into life, whether that's in the US or choosing to live somewhere abroad.

00:04:23:19 - 00:04:54:13
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, yeah. And as Aston said, you see my face every now and then on the channel. My name is Jonathan and my education background is actually in mechanical engineering. I got my bachelor's and master's of mechanical engineering at University of Missouri in school as assistants, and I've been now working in the cycling industry for 11 years. While Aston has a good broad depth of experience and knowledge all around, mine is very much dedicated to cycling and also some cycling infrastructure as well.

00:04:55:01 - 00:05:19:02
Jonathan Schottler
I've mostly focused in working on performance bicycles for elite athletes and professional racers, and I basically will start these projects with some consumer research. We've in the concept phase design phase and the manufacturing and then testing and mass production, and then I find my excuse to ride my bike as much as I possibly can. And that is essentially my passion in life.

00:05:19:11 - 00:05:21:19
Jonathan Schottler
Living on a bicycle.

00:05:21:19 - 00:05:35:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And we've sort of alluded to it a little bit in the name of the channel, the Black Forest family, but we didn't actually say it. So where are you reaching us from?

00:05:36:23 - 00:05:59:03
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, so we're located just outside of Freiburg in Brightcove, which if you ask the Germans, technically, Freiburg is not the Black Forest. It's on the edge of the Black Forest. It's right where we like to tell people. If you're trying to find us on a map. We live right where Germany touches France and Switzerland. Uh, down. Down here, southwest corner.

00:05:59:03 - 00:05:59:17
Ashton Schottler
Yeah.

00:06:00:06 - 00:06:14:01
Jonathan Schottler
Very beautiful area that we basically also call the border of Germany. This is where a lot of professional athletes live. This is a very nice cycling culture and a very much live outdoors type of community.

00:06:15:02 - 00:06:43:19
John Simmerman
I love this, too. And you'll notice that I have the cycling infrastructure map on Google Maps turned on. And so you see the bright green sort of popping on the screen here, and that's the cycling network. And I've been in your neck of the woods. I've taken the active towns channel to comber right across the river and the border there in France and then also up in Strasbourg.

00:06:43:19 - 00:06:56:05
John Simmerman
I spent a lot of time in Strasbourg documenting the cycling culture and the infrastructure there. So yeah, this is what a beautiful part of the country, what a beautiful part of Europe to be in.

00:06:57:09 - 00:07:17:14
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, we feel very lucky. Freiburg is such a really fun city too, I have to say, because it's a it's a university town, which, you know, it's just like the state. The university town is sort of its own separate stage from like a normal city. There's a certain vibrancy that that young people tend to bring, whether it's like with art and culture and music.

00:07:17:23 - 00:07:42:02
Ashton Schottler
But Freiburg is known within Germany as being the green capital of Germany, and that one is like a play on where it's located because it's in pretty much the Black Forest, the green, but also because yeah, but also it's it's a lake. Politically, I think the greens are the dominant political force. And then also like it's kind of a hippie town.

00:07:42:15 - 00:07:49:24
Ashton Schottler
There's a bunch of like everything is really geared towards recycling, energy efficiency, green technology.

00:07:49:24 - 00:07:58:08
Jonathan Schottler
Get around by bicycle, Also big car and trying to navigate by car is so difficult and so much slower than getting around by bike. Yeah, yeah.

00:07:58:16 - 00:08:00:29
John Simmerman
So it's a hippie. It's a hippie town, just like Boulder, Colorado.

00:08:01:29 - 00:08:03:07
Jonathan Schottler
Exactly. Exactly.

00:08:03:10 - 00:08:08:29
Ashton Schottler
I think the statistic that the city love to say is that there are three times as many bicycles as cars.

00:08:08:29 - 00:08:47:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. Just before we hit the record button, we were laughing because we realized yesterday you and I were in the same race in Boulder with that was Ironman Boulder. The first year the official Ironman was held in Boulder, Colorado. And so I had to do that race. I actually had technically retired in 2012 when I did Conor, and I'm like, Oh, I got to do it again because my hometown, because I consider Boulder my hometown, even though I don't live there anymore, I have to do that race because all my friends were doing it and or were part of the the team that was pulling the race together.

00:08:47:21 - 00:08:59:00
John Simmerman
So I knew since the photo was over, I was like, Oh, I remember that day. That's great. Now, did you also do some triathlons there, Jonathan? Are you just strictly a bike person?

00:08:59:00 - 00:09:20:24
Jonathan Schottler
Strictly a bike person? I try to do a lot of long distance racing. So here in Europe, I've done a lot of long marathon mountain bike racing. And then in Kansas there's a race now called Unbound Gravel, which is a 200 mile gravel race, which I've been on the podium a few times. So my focus, I guess towards the end of my racing career, I was never a professional, but it was always a long distance event.

00:09:21:06 - 00:09:30:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, and I use scare quotes on my racing career too, because I was slow. I was just an age group or Aston. You did quite well. You were on the podium.

00:09:32:12 - 00:09:49:27
Ashton Schottler
Well, yeah, it was the just the one time it was it was fun, I think, to someday I would love to do another Ironman again. But it's a to get to that distance and to be anywhere close to competitive, it takes so much time.

00:09:50:03 - 00:10:00:00
John Simmerman
So it's another part time job easily. So yeah. Okay. So I've zoomed out on the map here for Germany just a little bit. Is there another Freiburg, Germany?

00:10:00:28 - 00:10:03:13
Jonathan Schottler
Yes, there's another one in the eastern part of Germany.

00:10:03:24 - 00:10:23:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, because I'm going to be there soon. I'm going to be, I'm flying into Berlin and then I am going to Velo City. The conference right here in in Leipzig and it looks like there's a Freiburg down over here. So there's just another Freiburg very close by. So yeah, that's pretty cool.

00:10:23:10 - 00:10:31:24
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Technically, I think like that. I think if you look on like if you're trying to buy train tickets, for example, it's always like Freiburg, embrace, go.

00:10:31:24 - 00:10:36:05
Jonathan Schottler
But don't confuse. And also there is one in Switzerland as well. So make sure you buy the right.

00:10:36:19 - 00:10:53:29
Ashton Schottler
Yes. Yeah. So like not even joking. Right. You like flew into Zurich because you honestly like Eric is this is close to Frankfurt if you're flying into this area and you're buying a train ticket. Yeah. It's so easy to buy a train ticket to Freiburg, Switzerland and not Freiburg and Brice. Go and.

00:10:54:00 - 00:10:57:25
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, explain this to multiple people. It almost went to the wrong place. Yeah. Yeah.

00:10:57:29 - 00:11:19:27
John Simmerman
Well, what's funny was when I was in Colmar and Strasbourg, that was in 2015, and I had I was there for over a month and so I actually had a euro pass and so I was just traveling by rail all around, all around Europe. And I could totally see making that mistake and going which, which Freiburg am I going to quite remember.

00:11:20:04 - 00:11:26:03
John Simmerman
So I'm, I actually am kicking myself a little bit that I was that close to Freiburg and didn't stop in.

00:11:28:02 - 00:11:35:15
Ashton Schottler
It's a, it's a great city really. I mean we feel pretty lucky to be able to call this part of the world home.

00:11:35:17 - 00:11:50:25
Jonathan Schottler
It's I mean, it's one of the best cycling cities in Germany and Germany already is well known for cycling city is not so much as Holland, but it is extremely good. And if you ever get the chance to come back, just rent a bike and go and ride around, you're going to be absolutely blown away by it.

00:11:51:14 - 00:12:10:19
John Simmerman
Yeah. No, I spent quite a bit of time in Germany. I had friends. I actually stayed at her house, you know, for several days and we explored all over and we did make it up to the other college town, Münster. And so I shot some video up in there and it was a rainy day, but it was still, you know, wonderful tootling around on our bikes there.

00:12:10:19 - 00:12:42:08
John Simmerman
So, yeah, that's good stuff. Okay, enough of all this map stuff and all that kind of stuff. Now let's let's get to the real heart of the matter. U2 are content creators. Now, you had mentioned your history in in your Ph.D. and in your teaching and everything. The first two things, I guess, is a, how did you both end up in Germany and then, B, how did we end up getting the the YouTube channel?

00:12:42:08 - 00:12:47:20
John Simmerman
So let's start how did you end up in Germany? And then we'll we'll shift gears to the the YouTube channel.

00:12:48:13 - 00:13:09:29
Jonathan Schottler
So I'll start first because I moved to Germany first. I basically landed my job at a bike company straight out of my master's degree. After one year, they gave me the opportunity to move to Taiwan and go spend three months there just being in the factories every single day. And from there we had a small satellite office here in Freiburg and they gave me the opportunity to come here for two years.

00:13:10:11 - 00:13:19:16
Jonathan Schottler
And once my two year visa was up, they just kept extending it and extending it until I had a permanent contract. And I've been now in Germany for almost ten years.

00:13:19:29 - 00:13:20:08
John Simmerman
Okay.

00:13:20:21 - 00:13:22:12
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah. And which.

00:13:22:26 - 00:13:23:13
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, which.

00:13:23:14 - 00:13:25:07
John Simmerman
Which company is that, Jonathon Real quick.

00:13:26:08 - 00:13:33:27
Jonathan Schottler
So I worked for a company called Cannondale for ten years and for the last one year now, I've been working for a specialized bicycle.

00:13:34:14 - 00:13:35:24
John Simmerman
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.

00:13:36:29 - 00:14:10:19
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. And so when Jonathan and I first started dating, I was actually teaching at the University of Central Missouri, which is a small state university in very small town in Missouri, very different from very currently live. And so a lot of our relationship early on was, I mean, long distance essentially. So a lot of the the photos that we had shared with you a lot of the time was we got into this like groove of if we have to travel to see each other, why not start going some places that were like fun and interesting.

00:14:10:19 - 00:14:18:09
Ashton Schottler
So like we joked that our why not? Well, maybe like we had to get on a plane regardless, right?

00:14:18:09 - 00:14:18:29
John Simmerman
Right. Yeah.

00:14:19:02 - 00:14:39:15
Ashton Schottler
So like our yeah, we joke that our show was true, but our third date was like a trip to Puerto Rico. And then like, we ended up going on a big trip to Nicaragua, and that's where we got engaged. And then we did some hopping around Europe. And yeah, like it was just sort of something that we both really bonded over.

00:14:39:20 - 00:15:02:03
Ashton Schottler
And at the time that I was working for the university in Missouri, I hate saying this is sounds really like superficial, but I only had a master's degree at that time, which for most people is a very high level of achievement. But like in the academic world, you're not really eligible for promotion unless you hold a terminal degree.

00:15:02:15 - 00:15:16:19
Ashton Schottler
So I knew that I needed to go back and get my Ph.D. And so it was just one of those things where it sort of worked out that we had been together for a year. We had decided that we were going to get engaged and try to get married. And so I started looking for a PhD programs in Germany.

00:15:17:01 - 00:15:17:22
Jonathan Schottler
And Switzerland.

00:15:17:25 - 00:15:37:13
Ashton Schottler
And Switzerland. I mean, I was looking all over just to try to get a spot and by really just luck and meeting the right people. I actually got into a program in Freiburg, so where I was able to come over with that, everything just sort of kind of fell into place. We were very fortunate in that regard.

00:15:37:24 - 00:16:06:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, And this is from 2019. Those earlier photos were from Nicaragua, and this is it just just a few years ago, just immediately pre-pandemic in 2019. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, So that's fascinating. So we, we settle into the groove in, in Germany and. Essen What year was it that you actually made that move In 2018. So 2018.

00:16:06:18 - 00:16:11:23
John Simmerman
So you had a couple of years there and then, then the world really changed in 2020.

00:16:13:04 - 00:16:21:07
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, we actually, we had our pandemic baby. So I found out I was pregnant and then quite literally, Freiburg shut down one week later.

00:16:21:25 - 00:16:22:06
John Simmerman
And.

00:16:22:28 - 00:16:48:00
Ashton Schottler
It was it was it was crazy. So our son Jack, we he was born November 2020. Yeah. And that was the whole experience in and of itself. Just like, I mean, yeah, everything you can to. I mean, it's my first pregnancy anyway, so I didn't know what to expect. It definitely wasn't during a pandemic, but it's, it's been, it's been fun.

00:16:48:00 - 00:16:52:00
Ashton Schottler
Thankfully things have eased up a heck of a lot since then and things have changed quite dramatically.

00:16:52:00 - 00:17:15:11
Jonathan Schottler
But like basically the Black Forest family also originated because of the pandemic as well. We were actually we were on a vacation in the Seychelles February 2020, so we were reading our fall on the news, everything going on in China, and we're just thinking, well, that doesn't sound so good. And then we got back to Germany and that's when everything just went south and we basically decided, let's make a website.

00:17:15:11 - 00:17:29:22
Jonathan Schottler
We kind of wanted to do it. Just tell them about traveling, because we were, you know, we wanted to travel around the world and record it, but we wanted to share all of this experience with our family. So that's actually where the website started and it really just started changing and evolving from there.

00:17:30:27 - 00:17:40:06
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, I think like initially a lot of our early videos were more travel oriented because that was sort of what we had been doing prior to the pandemic.

00:17:40:06 - 00:18:07:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. It's it's amazing how similar your story is to Jason Slaughter's story with the YouTube channel, not just Bikes. His whole reason for starting the YouTube channel, not just bikes, was to try to communicate to all those people, his friends and family who were questioning him and his wife for moving their family from the Toronto area into Amsterdam.

00:18:08:10 - 00:18:26:11
John Simmerman
And and he's like, he was originally doing it in tweets and he was on Twitter and he was tweeting out and he was like, no, this is too limiting, you know, 140 characters and short little videos. And so he on a lark, you know, that's what he did is like, I'm going to start a YouTube channel and then, you know, it's blown up since then.

00:18:26:11 - 00:18:53:09
John Simmerman
I don't know if you follow not just bikes or not, but he's closing in on 1 million subscribers now. So it's really been amazing. Yeah. And my channel exists simply because, you know, I brought him on early on in not early on in the podcast but early on in the YouTube environment for active towns. And that caused, you know, my channel to blow up a little bit, which was very, very nice.

00:18:53:09 - 00:19:04:18
John Simmerman
So I've had the honor to interview him three times now and including one of the Times an on bike interview, which is one of my favorite things to do, is that awesome? Yeah.

00:19:05:00 - 00:19:10:04
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, we're big we're big fans of his. We watch his channel all the time. He has wonderful content.

00:19:10:14 - 00:19:30:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah, fantastic. It really is great. Okay, so we're on your landing page. So this is the landing page for the YouTube channel itself. And we see you guys are doing a rock star job closing in on 50,000 subscribers. At this point, you're halfway to that magical 100,000 subscriber number.

00:19:31:06 - 00:19:44:04
Jonathan Schottler
We can't believe it's like a happening so quickly as well. We were not expecting it to take off the way it has because we actually started this channel less than two years ago. We had our website going for an entire year before we decided to open up a YouTube channel.

00:19:44:05 - 00:19:47:26
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's then about a year and a half since we posted our first video.

00:19:48:07 - 00:20:22:28
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations, you guys. This is absolutely amazing. And the content that you are producing, it kind of fits into that. You'd mentioned it's all over the place in terms of the types of, of narratives that you're going into and talking about. And I loved how you said, Ashton, that this is like helping you exercise that sort of academic side and I could tell in the production of your videos and some of the things that you're covering and the level of depth that you're at, you're definitely taking a professorial sort of approach to it.

00:20:24:15 - 00:20:54:21
Ashton Schottler
Well, I would I would hope so. I mean, that's something that I whenever I look for content, one of the things that I really like and not just bikes is whenever he talks about a lot of his topics, he brings it. Of course, he brings it from a personal perspective always. He's always talking about what he's experienced, what he's seen, but he also provides really great context in the form of like, whether that's like the history of why something is happening the way everyone should only be, like a statistic, like sprinkled in here or there.

00:20:54:28 - 00:21:19:16
Ashton Schottler
And it's from a place of perspective where it's not speculative, right? But just sort of saying like, here's how things are, here's how they got to be that way, and here's why it's important to like, think about the bigger picture of, you know, whatever subject you happen to be talking about. And I think like that's something that we find also very interesting and try to incorporate into our videos.

00:21:19:16 - 00:21:38:22
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, for sure. I mean, Ashton does pretty much all of the research for all of these videos and she's extremely good and proficient at it, but it's always a focus for us to keep everything fact driven, data driven and unbiased as possible because we can create content and people can come up with their own opinions. And that's really one of the reasons why we wanted to start this as well.

00:21:38:22 - 00:21:52:00
Jonathan Schottler
Every time we go home, we have a lot of family members asking questions about being in Germany. We explain it, but it's so much easier to really just make a video and put the data on the screen and tell the story in a very clear, easy to watch way.

00:21:52:16 - 00:22:14:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, and that's what I why I think your your channel is so incredibly popular. It's why Jason's is so incredibly popular too. Is because it's not just about bikes, you know, it really is, you know, a very, very broad thing. And and he used to joke about that and say that, yeah, you know, I kept getting this question and so I dove into that.

00:22:14:05 - 00:22:35:01
John Simmerman
And I can totally see that, you know, when I look at these things like poverty in Germany and gun laws here, you can totally see that it's like stuff not only ripped from the headlines in terms of like critical issues and that are happening, but it's also probably like you said, Jonathan, it could be like, you know, these questions that keep popping up saying, now what is it like to really live there?

00:22:35:28 - 00:22:36:18
John Simmerman
So yeah.

00:22:37:24 - 00:23:13:26
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. And I think too, like we also try on a couple of occasions to talk about like biases that we had before we moved here. I mean, you know, you can't help but know what you know. And when you both of us come from the Midwest, we're both from pretty, pretty sheltered kind of bubbles of middle America. And there's often like I've found at least that like, you know, whenever American news organizations will talk about things that are happening abroad, particularly in Europe or always like in adult anecdotal, they're never really anything that's like truly in-depth.

00:23:13:26 - 00:23:42:06
Ashton Schottler
And so like, there wasn't necessarily like I don't mean ignorance in like a bad word, but I feel like, you know, I truly didn't know what it was like to work in Europe. How does health care working in Europe? How does I mean, yeah, all of these different topics. And so a lot of it too, with these like research videos have, we've also drawn upon like, what did I not know before I moved here and what was really eye opening for me.

00:23:43:00 - 00:24:08:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. I want to, you know, kind of hone in on, on a couple of different themes and and channel you in Jonathan you know on on this this particular video that you did and this of course is the car replacement and talk a little bit about that trend that we see, you know in you know, worldwide globally.

00:24:08:21 - 00:24:30:22
John Simmerman
And you talk a little bit about this in the in the video here of some of the e-bike trends that we're seeing happening in the industry and and it really took off two bikes in general took off during the pandemic, but e-bikes really took off. And you do do a really good job in this in this video, two of it's not just about the sport bikes.

00:24:30:22 - 00:24:53:27
John Simmerman
I mean, we're talking about transportation bikes, We're talking about cargo bikes. We're talking about family bikes. Talk a little bit about that from your perspective of being in the industry of how much of a game changer this is for hopefully getting more people on bikes more often, dare I say maybe even in North America?

00:24:53:27 - 00:25:21:24
Jonathan Schottler
You know, that's a that's a really, really good question because when I started working in this industry 11 years ago, there were e-bikes, but there was not really an explosion of e-bikes at the time. Like these industries were basically driven by racing bicycles, adventure bicycles, all based off of pedal power. But now, recently, sustainability has become a very hot topic around the world, and getting people outdoors on bicycles has become absolutely critical.

00:25:22:09 - 00:25:38:12
Jonathan Schottler
But people still have a fear of getting around and pedaling themselves and getting sweaty where they're going. But now the e-bikes are around. Like people don't have to think about that anymore. They have a bike with some assistance, but at the exact same time they're still able to get a workout. It's up to them how hard they want to push the bike.

00:25:39:02 - 00:26:01:27
Jonathan Schottler
But I mean, just moving on from a standard city bike, you can now go out and buy a cargo bike. You can buy a short tail, a long tail, cargo bike, you can buy basket bikes. I mean, DHL, for instance, here delivers packages by bicycle and by cargo bike, because really one of the most expensive parts of delivering a package is getting into the city and trying to navigate the vehicle through town.

00:26:01:27 - 00:26:28:14
Jonathan Schottler
But now cities like here in Freiburg, like they are so open to building the infrastructure to allow people to get around and get to work, get to school, absolutely safely, with separated bike lanes, with dedicated bike lanes, bicycle parking. It's been really an interesting thing to watch. And like you said, COVID bicycle explosion. Every single company, we could not keep enough inventory available.

00:26:28:22 - 00:26:59:21
Jonathan Schottler
And of course, immediately after that, there was massive shortages because of COVID outbreaks in the factories. So we couldn't necessarily meet the demand of all of the customers. But it's really just been kind of fueling a change as well, because not just focusing our efforts on racing bicycles, it's become abundantly clear that the growth of e-bikes is exponential, and the money that needs to go into development is city bikes, e-bikes, active living, raising bicycle, stay pretty steady like they're still popular.

00:26:59:21 - 00:27:06:24
Jonathan Schottler
They always have been, but e-bikes, it's it's really been a fun thing to be a part of because there's a lot more opportunity.

00:27:07:24 - 00:27:39:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, I mean when you think of it from just a market perspective, if we imagine that maybe around 1% of an entire population might, you know, be in the market for a high end racing bike, if that you know, when you start to think about a city bike, a family bike, a cargo bike for mom, and, you know, all of a sudden, oh, well, gosh, now we start looking at statistics of there's a whole interested yet concerned group of people in a community.

00:27:39:07 - 00:27:51:24
John Simmerman
And if there were safe and inviting opportunities to ride like what we see right here in this image that scrolling by then suddenly Ashton you might feel pretty comfortable about grabbing the kid and going for a ride.

00:27:53:04 - 00:28:21:15
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. I mean, it's it's been pretty it's been really cool to experience that because we just recently moved to like a smaller village just outside of Freiburg. And yeah, like I would say 75% of the time, 80% of the time I take our son to and from daycare with a bicycle is faster. I mean, it really is, especially because we live in like a really old village that's got a lot of logos, twisty turny, like really narrow streets.

00:28:21:24 - 00:28:56:09
Ashton Schottler
So is coming the opposite way. You've got to like, pull over and get over. But I mean, really, though, I've even seen where like my parents, for example, my mom recently retired and they went out and bought e-bikes, which is really cool. And I've seen something that they've been exploring more recently. And I think to like just biking thing, it's just expanding opportunities for people to get outside and to to go longer distances and to seek that out more often doesn't I mean, of course, like you can do it for fitness, but it doesn't have to be for fitness.

00:28:56:18 - 00:28:56:27
John Simmerman
Right?

00:28:57:00 - 00:29:10:09
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, exactly. Like I ride bicycle for fitness, but I own e-bikes because I don't always want to ride a bicycle for strictly fitness purposes. I just want to get from point A to point B and it's up to me how hard I actually want to push.

00:29:10:11 - 00:29:11:17
Ashton Schottler
Or pick Jack up or.

00:29:11:28 - 00:29:31:06
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, I mean, even like when Jack was in a daycare about 20 kilometers from our house or 12 miles, I rode my bike. There was the trailer was my road bike back and forth, which was a fantastic workout, by the way. But yeah, the infrastructure made it possible and it really wasn't that much slower than the drive, which is the funniest thing.

00:29:31:29 - 00:30:09:17
John Simmerman
Right? It's it's funny, too. A lot of things change when you become a family. And and I'm sure this happened for you guys. And so this is, you know, a wonderful video that you put into into place a talking about what it's like for families to be going for that active mobility option a little bit more frequently. I know that it wasn't a complete surprise, but were you are you kind of surprised by the the level of empowerment that you all have of being able to as a family unit now be able to get out and ride?

00:30:09:17 - 00:30:39:27
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, I mean, I would say that was a if you want to talk about like culture shock of moving to Germany, a huge one is the independence that smaller kids have when it comes to cycling. Like, I didn't grow up in a large city. I grew up in a smaller town again in middle America, but because there was no infrastructure for bicycles, they even though my elementary school is maybe just a mile away from our house, I never rode my bike to school ever because it wasn't safe to do it.

00:30:39:27 - 00:31:02:17
Ashton Schottler
I would have had to have crossed like a county highway. There wasn't like even a sidewalk that I could have ridden on if I wanted to. And so it just wasn't even something that I would have thought about. But here in Germany, kids will like there's a whole transition phase. They go from kick bikes, then they move to pedal bikes on the sidewalk and they move to a little bit bigger bike in front of mom and dad on the road.

00:31:02:27 - 00:31:31:06
Ashton Schottler
And truly, like by the age of eight, most kids are biking by themselves without parental supervision to and from school because it's safe to do it. And they even have in Freiburg, there's actually a a bicycle school that they take the kids to to learn all of the rules of the road on what different signs mean and what the etiquette is on what to do or what not to do.

00:31:31:24 - 00:31:52:08
Ashton Schottler
And it like it really is so empowering from a small person's perspective to have that kind of independence, to just be able to go out on a bicycle on their own, to go to the park or to go to school or go to a bakery. And that's something that I know I sure never experienced when I was in the U.S..

00:31:52:08 - 00:32:11:01
Jonathan Schottler
And I think one of the important things, too, is we want our children to grow up seeing everything around them. We don't want them sitting in a car just like looking at a window and a beetle b-pillar like you. Don't you want them to experience like the actual air and also just to get out and exercise, to get from point A to point B, like we don't have to live off of a car culture all the time.

00:32:11:22 - 00:32:19:09
Jonathan Schottler
I think it's just giving them the empowerment to get to the places they need to go to by themselves and not always rely on a vehicle.

00:32:19:23 - 00:32:35:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, and what's need is in this video that we're we're kind of seeing some images past our our conversation. Here you are. You were just pointing out that arriving at the zoo and you ended up finding out, oh, we don't have to pay anything because we didn't drive.

00:32:36:03 - 00:33:02:25
Ashton Schottler
Right? Yeah, yeah. It's cool to in Freiburg they've actually made in our city here, the vast majority of the urban center is pedestrian only. And so they really try to actually keep cars now on the periphery and even like there's still some streets that are even off for bicycles during certain periods of the day because they have so many, like large crowds of people.

00:33:03:05 - 00:33:14:29
Ashton Schottler
But I mean, you know, like like a lot of cities in Europe, they're very compact. And it is true you get around the city so much faster by bicycle than you will by car.

00:33:15:00 - 00:33:30:25
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, for sure. It's so stressful driving around here by car and it's really almost kind of done on purpose. And Freiburg, like 20 years ago, was mostly all vehicle with like car and there was no bicycle infrastructure. It has come a very long way in a short amount of time.

00:33:31:06 - 00:33:51:25
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, they've been a really great model, I think, because like that's actually something that I think somebody would like to make a video on is how cycling culture actually grew in Freiburg. Because I think like sometimes we look at European cities and think like, well, they were probably always that way and like Freiburg, the hippie town, but it wasn't always that way.

00:33:52:24 - 00:34:22:15
Ashton Schottler
Like there's this huge, you know, great play spaces now and green spaces and community spaces within the city center. Like there's one the little synagogue plots that like it's part memorial, but it's part like water splash pad for the kids in the summer just to hang out in the city. That used to be a parking lot. That wasn't like a fun space, but like even cities with in Europe are actually a pretty cool model for showing, like, it can be done, you can do it, you.

00:34:22:15 - 00:34:24:18
Jonathan Schottler
Can enjoy being outside, not stare at cars all.

00:34:24:18 - 00:34:25:07
Ashton Schottler
The time. Yeah.

00:34:25:29 - 00:34:50:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well, and I think that's it's a very good point that you made there. And yeah that would be a wonderful video to, to produce and it is helpful for viewers from North America from, you know, other car dominated societies Australia, New Zealand, other places where they look towards towards the Dutch and towards the Germans and in the European cities.

00:34:50:20 - 00:35:10:11
John Simmerman
And just to make that assumption that, oh, it must have always been this way, it's like, no, I mean when you look at the 1970s and what they had to go through in the Netherlands to, to really kind of fight to, you know, push back and claim back some of that space that had been ceded over to the automobile.

00:35:10:23 - 00:35:30:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's it's quite astounding. And it's I'm not surprised to hear that. You see a similar sort of timeline and narrative happening in Freiburg because, yeah, the automobile has that insidious way of of taking over the space, if not held in check. And Germany is a car country.

00:35:31:07 - 00:35:40:14
Ashton Schottler
I would say yeah you could you know they and that's the thing too. Like Germany. Yeah the autobahn I mean Mercedes, Volkswagen, Audi all.

00:35:40:15 - 00:35:42:02
Jonathan Schottler
Culture is still very strong.

00:35:42:02 - 00:35:57:27
Ashton Schottler
Right? Absolutely. And I think like there is there's an argument to be had where of course, like, you know, those companies are making a shift towards more greener technologies as well. But like there is a model that shows like how these things can work together and work in tandem with one another.

00:35:58:09 - 00:36:13:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. Well, I mean, and it comes down to that, that concept of urban design and livability and communities and nobody wants to have an autobahn right outside their door. I mean, that's not a pleasant environment.

00:36:13:16 - 00:36:15:05
Ashton Schottler
No, not even here. Yeah.

00:36:15:21 - 00:36:39:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. So with that in mind, talking about urban design, I was curious. I'm like, okay, I wonder what they're most popular video is and boom, there it is. This is illegal in America, so it's very much an urbanism episode or, you know, video. Were you surprised that this one I mean we're talking over half a million views already.

00:36:40:29 - 00:37:04:21
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. Yeah. And actually I should if I'm going to be honest with why that got so many views, I should give a shout out to not just Spike because he actually shared that video in his platform. I remember not even joking. I like randomly rolled over in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep and I looked at my phone and all of a sudden we had like we were getting like 7000 views an hour on our channel at 2:00 in the morning.

00:37:04:21 - 00:37:27:26
Ashton Schottler
And I woke Jonathan up. I'm like, What is happening? But but I mean, I think like what really resonated for a lot of people in in that particular video is something that I talk to you about in my own dissertation was like the role of NIMBYism, like in my dissertation I had more to do with low income housing, but you know, NIMBYism were not in my backyard.

00:37:27:26 - 00:37:55:06
Ashton Schottler
It rears its head in so many ways. It doesn't have to necessarily be low income housing. It can be, you know, whether it's putting in public transportation infrastructure or making your city more walkable and like that particular video, I think we also spoke quite a bit about how like Germany even today and the newer areas in which they develop, still make it human centric.

00:37:55:06 - 00:38:32:03
Ashton Schottler
It's not just the old parts of the city where they had to be human centric because the only other way to get around was by Twitter, by horse. But even the new developments that are going in around all of the major cities that we have in our area, there's still planning, okay, how do we get in bakeries and how do we fit in daycare centers, all with pharmacy, all within walkable distances from where people are living so that you don't have to have a vehicle to get around and does what that does.

00:38:32:03 - 00:38:41:11
Ashton Schottler
Like we've spoke earlier about kids, like even with kids, what that does for kids to have things that are within walking distance that they can safely get to and from and not.

00:38:42:00 - 00:38:54:20
Jonathan Schottler
Just for you also talked about the culture like USA is very much a car culture and that's what you need to get around. You cannot really get around by bicycle currently in most cities very safely or easily in suburbs. In suburbs. Yeah.

00:38:55:03 - 00:39:20:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. Now, so obviously in the Netherlands, we saw a big difference between what was happening prior to World War Two and then World War Two happens and then what happens post-World War two, and then the, you know, sort of the shift in the greatest example in the Netherlands, of course, is Rotterdam, which was pretty much destroyed in World War Two from the bombing.

00:39:20:03 - 00:39:56:26
John Simmerman
And they built back based on plans that were already in the works on the automobile. And so they doubled down on this concept that we're going to have. Why wide roads and high towers and everything. And and they went forward with those plans for post-World War two in through the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s. They doubled down and they built Rotterdam up to be more modern, more looking like a North American modern city run about the 1990 and early 2000, they realized they made a mistake.

00:39:56:26 - 00:40:22:14
John Simmerman
And they're now they're trying to make it more livable and they're trying to reverse course. Did we see some similar types of situations that you know of in in Germany as well, where that that period of time, immediately post-World War two in cities were new cities being built like new greenfield development or new cities being rebuilt after the war started doubling down on being car friendly and car centric.

00:40:23:15 - 00:40:53:16
Ashton Schottler
In my experience, it's a very city by city basis on which plan they chose to move forward with Freiburg specifically largely rebuilt in the exact same footprint as they had before. Right. But other cities chose to do what Rotterdam did. And expanding that way, I think, you know, Freiburg is a bit unique where we live too, because it was mostly the very Lake City core that was bombed.

00:40:53:16 - 00:41:01:00
Ashton Schottler
Interestingly, it was bombed twice, once on accident by. The Germans because they thought they were in France.

00:41:01:06 - 00:41:02:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, it was so close.

00:41:02:13 - 00:41:24:08
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, it was so close. And then a second time the, the larger one happened was like this called like Operation Tigerfish. And they really took out the majority of the urban core of the city and so what I think is actually quite fascinating is like they actually chose to try to rebuild in the exact same footprint that they had.

00:41:24:08 - 00:42:09:15
Ashton Schottler
And I think that's actually why the city is still such a fun tourist spot today, because even though it was destroyed, it still retained a lot of the same character that they had pre-war. But Friedberg is one of those interesting cities where in modern Fribourg, there's always a lake. I think I mentioned before that like, you know, the Green Party is the dominant political party in Germany and it shows a lot whenever, like new developments are even being proposed, there is one that's been going on for like a decade now called D10, but that they still haven't broke ground on because Freiburg is growing a lot and it's experiencing these growing pains.

00:42:09:15 - 00:42:36:00
Ashton Schottler
And so getting back is a new neighborhood that they're proposing that would actually start expand out the the city border. It's not infilling, but spilling out on the edge and the pushback from the citizens saying is this really what we want to be doing are do we want to really continue to grow out? Why can't we grow in what does this do to the natural environment?

00:42:36:00 - 00:42:57:12
Ashton Schottler
What is this going to do for a strain on our public transit system? What is this going to do to our watershed area in a very like tribal way? They protest did it by the farmers, drove their tractors, the city hall, and parked them on the front lawn like it's a it's like a very like grassroots kind of thing.

00:42:57:12 - 00:43:19:00
Ashton Schottler
But like, like even and I feel like and I've been to and so many things with Freiburg that, like, I feel like from an American perspective, things that are done here are so green. But for a lot of Freiburg, they're still like, No, we could do better. So they doubled those shut down the city with like bicycle protest.

00:43:19:00 - 00:43:24:00
Jonathan Schottler
Highway through town. Yeah, basically they've shut it down multiple times and it's just bicycle going down the street.

00:43:24:00 - 00:43:33:15
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. Because they're still like, they're still like, we don't want to have these cars with emissions coming through anymore, so let's just shut down the highway and write our bicycle down the highway. Right. Which is. Yeah.

00:43:34:10 - 00:44:04:20
John Simmerman
So talk a little bit about that because that's one of the challenges. You know, when we when we look at trying to take bold steps to change what our built environment looks like, including adding bike lanes, taking steps to reduce the number and the speed of motor vehicles traveling through our cities and past our houses, we get a lot of pushback from the status quo, the motoring public, and and obviously some of the powers that be.

00:44:04:20 - 00:44:21:23
John Simmerman
And But what's what's the spirit? It sounds like in Freiburg, the spirit is protest. You come together as a group and and and be vocal about it. Is that is that a very German thing or is it more regional? And it really depends on the situation.

00:44:23:08 - 00:45:04:00
Ashton Schottler
I think it's super German. We actually have a video on this on our channel where we talked about protest culture in in Germany. So we talk about just how prevalent like protest culture is something very different from a German perspective versus an American perspective because an American perspective there seems to be on some level, no matter what you're protesting, right or left, there's like this subversive thing that's like, well, like protesting is inherently un-American and like, if you're protesting, then like, somehow you're saying that we're not doing things good enough and that that's like, I mean, like if you should be proud of where you live and like, if you're protesting, I don't know, like

00:45:04:00 - 00:45:09:06
Ashton Schottler
there always is. There seems to be this like some subliminal thing of no matter what it happens to be.

00:45:09:18 - 00:45:11:20
Jonathan Schottler
You're being un-American if you're protesting.

00:45:11:21 - 00:45:13:03
Ashton Schottler
Yes. We're whereas which.

00:45:13:03 - 00:45:14:22
John Simmerman
Is kind of funny when you think about it.

00:45:15:24 - 00:45:44:25
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, it is. It is, actually. But, you know, here in Germany, being vocal and expressing yourself. No matter the platform, is your right as a citizen. And it was I mean, we lived in the city center for a number years and there was a protest on something every other week. And, you know, whether it was Fridays for Future or if it was people who were protesting COVID lockdown.

00:45:45:06 - 00:45:47:28
Ashton Schottler
But that was their right. They were they were always peaceful.

00:45:49:04 - 00:45:59:09
Jonathan Schottler
But they may have had to plan them beforehand. The police were there to escort them front and back and provide supervision. They were always very, I guess, tame. I wouldn't say.

00:45:59:13 - 00:46:18:23
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, for the most part. I mean, but it's cool though, to see how like that is, how in the German culture, in the German mind, this is how I am patriotic. It is by protesting that I am showing that I want to participate actively in politics and my voice will be heard.

00:46:18:27 - 00:46:19:24
Jonathan Schottler
And we can improve.

00:46:19:24 - 00:46:43:17
Ashton Schottler
And we can improve that totally. The mindset here, which is really, really neat to see. And from an urban planning perspective, one of the things that more recently happened in Freiburg that like you've even experienced, was by protesting and by advocating for it. There is a ring road that circles on that because again, you can't really drive into the Old City center much anymore.

00:46:44:09 - 00:47:02:01
Ashton Schottler
So there is like this ring road that, yes, that's literally it's called the other rings. But they actually yeah, they actually advocated to have one portion of it reduced down to a single lane so that they could use the other lane for bicycle.

00:47:02:01 - 00:47:22:10
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah. Because they had a sidewalk they were putting all the bicycles on which is far too narrow especially now with people with cargo bikes and point trailers. Right next to the car is going 50 kilometers an hour. So they just shut down the lane. It's now just bicycles. There is a lot of frustration with people who do not ride bicycles, but for the most part, it's been okay.

00:47:22:10 - 00:47:49:24
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. No, right. Yeah. I mean, like, of course you'll always hit like, the traffic, but. But it was cool to see, like enough people came forward and said that, like, this isn't just about, you know, bicycle. This is about safety. This is about like our kids being able to get to and from. And like, I don't feel like there are many cities that would reduce down the main road around town by an entire lane simply to accommodate bicycles.

00:47:49:24 - 00:47:54:04
Ashton Schottler
But they vary. I mean, and it took years. It took a lot of ad advocacy.

00:47:54:12 - 00:48:09:07
Jonathan Schottler
It's honestly packed all the time to with bicycles, the number of bicycle is going down through there every day is really pretty incredible. There's always like a bicycle traffic jam at the stoplight, which is something I never complain about. It's a really cool experience, actually.

00:48:09:07 - 00:48:33:00
John Simmerman
Well, interestingly enough, I do see that your second most watched video is actually driving one, two, one, you know, Germany versus the United States and as I recall, I can't remember which book I was reading. It might have been traffic by a Tom Vanderbilt. I think he referenced how difficult it actually is to get a driver's license in Germany.

00:48:33:13 - 00:48:38:05
John Simmerman
Can you speak to that a little bit? Or maybe that's what you spoke about in that video?

00:48:38:05 - 00:48:45:00
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, we did quite a bit. So, you know, American car culture is like 16. You get your driver's license.

00:48:45:04 - 00:48:52:02
Jonathan Schottler
You get a permanent 14. And Kansas, I had my permanent 14 and I could drive around with my mom, which was crazy to think about how.

00:48:52:20 - 00:49:13:00
Ashton Schottler
Wild that that's allowed. But it's interesting because getting a driver's license in the U.S. varies so much state to state by what they actually require. Like I came from Illinois, so for me, I actually had driver's ed that was part of high school. It was a class we took in high school, and then we had another semester where we did driving with a driving instructor in high school.

00:49:13:00 - 00:49:13:26
Ashton Schottler
But for you.

00:49:14:12 - 00:49:34:26
Jonathan Schottler
Nothing had to do a certain number of hours with my mom driving around and then I had to go drive around the block with a worker, I guess, at the DMV at the time. And then I had to do a written test that I could take as many times as I needed that day. And until I passed, that was basically like, yeah, here in Germany it's about a 1500 euro test.

00:49:34:27 - 00:49:51:07
Jonathan Schottler
So it's very expensive when you're 18 and you want to get your driver's license. And also you have to have a theoretical test as well. And a certain number of hours of driving with an instructor. I can't remember the number of hours off the top of my head, but it is a lot of hours and that's where a lot of the money actually comes from.

00:49:51:07 - 00:49:51:16
Jonathan Schottler
And it's.

00:49:51:17 - 00:49:56:01
Ashton Schottler
And it's true, a driving school, you can't just like go driving with your parents, but like it has to be with its.

00:49:56:02 - 00:50:04:06
Jonathan Schottler
Extreme, least strict too. I've heard stories of people where they open their door without looking for a bicycle coming in first and they are immediately disqualified.

00:50:04:18 - 00:50:26:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. So I think if I remember this and this was years ago that I read the book, I think it it highlighted the difficulty of getting the driver's license. And one of the things that they one of the narratives that he had in that was that you needed to be able to to anticipate the unimaginable, like a kid running out in front of, you know, in front of traffic.

00:50:26:04 - 00:50:41:06
John Simmerman
And you needed to be traveling in such a way where you would be able to respond to that and and be able to stop in time. Did you get a sense that it was that extreme in terms of being able to to really drive safely and have that level of responsibility?

00:50:42:00 - 00:51:01:24
Jonathan Schottler
I've always said German drivers are the best drivers I've ever encountered in the world, even when I'm riding by bicycle or I'm driving in our cars. The number of people who are on alert 100% of the time is really everybody. Everybody is watching everything going on around them. They are anticipating what the other vehicles are doing. They're anticipating a kid running out in front of them.

00:51:01:29 - 00:51:17:22
Jonathan Schottler
If there's a child on the sidewalk, on a bicycle, they slow down because they're worried about the the kid might lose control and go into the road. But I think the German drivers are so acutely aware of everything going on around them that they always will anticipate the worst case and they're ready to adapt to it.

00:51:18:01 - 00:51:46:11
Ashton Schottler
Well, you know, it's something that we've talked about in a couple of videos, too. And I think this is really relevant, especially under the umbrella of talking about cycling, because almost everyone bikes in some capacity here. There is a much greater respect and awareness for cyclists because the people who are driving the cars have also been in the position of the person riding a bike, right?

00:51:46:19 - 00:52:21:13
Ashton Schottler
So they're they're consciously thinking about them because they've been in both positions, they've been riding a bike with traffic and, they've been in the car in traffic, like when I'm riding a bike in Germany alongside traffic. I feel so much safer than I do in the United States, even with equal infrastructure. Even if you want to look at like a best case scenario in the United States of in terms of like an infrastructure standpoint, I, I know that before a car ahead of me turns right in Germany, that they look behind them to see if anybody's coming in the bike lane.

00:52:21:13 - 00:52:32:03
Ashton Schottler
Always, always where there is like and this is no shade to American drivers, it's just not something we typically think about because usually there's not a cyclist.

00:52:32:03 - 00:52:49:07
Jonathan Schottler
And that's my mom usually says she's in Kansas City now. There's a lot of bike lanes being put in and people treat the bike lanes as turning lanes like that's basically if you're riding your bicycle in a bike lane, you need to be the one anticipating the worst possible case. And I can't tell you how many times of training on the road in the United States.

00:52:49:07 - 00:53:07:07
Jonathan Schottler
I got buzzed with just maybe a foot away from the mirror, getting yelled at, have bottles thrown at me, just getting spit on. The worst things you can imagine here in Germany. I can't tell you the last time I was even honked at going down the road. The only time I'm honked at is if you're riding too wide on a road where it's not allowed.

00:53:07:15 - 00:53:12:06
Jonathan Schottler
They simply are doing that because you are not following the rules that you should be following the rules.

00:53:12:06 - 00:53:33:15
John Simmerman
I think you guys, I think you have a video to on on following rules and verboten. Is that part of the culture because that's one of the things that I notice in like Denmark when I'm visiting Copenhagen, they're very much a rule following culture. Is that part of the German thing too is, is a rule following culture?

00:53:34:09 - 00:53:50:16
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, I think so. But it's not just follow the rules because they're there. It's do this because it makes the society better for everybody else. It's a cumulative thing. We all follow the rules. We all benefit from it. This isn't just you follow it because somebody wrote this rule and you need to, you know, follow that rule.

00:53:50:20 - 00:54:07:25
Ashton Schottler
Yeah, but I read like there's there's some humor to it, too. Like, I don't know, like there's a there's the aspect that you're supposed to be an example for, for children. But then there's also the other bit of it where like American culture is very much like a mind my own business kind of called true like advice on.

00:54:08:05 - 00:54:08:22
Jonathan Schottler
What to do.

00:54:08:22 - 00:54:31:28
Ashton Schottler
Well, like, you know, as an American, if I saw somebody breaking a rule that wasn't like a serious rule, like if I saw somebody jaywalking in the United States, I'm not going to go out of my way to be like, hey, man, that's not allowed here. But German culture is like, well, I had better correct them because clearly they are not aware of the rules.

00:54:31:28 - 00:54:39:12
Ashton Schottler
And like, I mean, like you'll get scolded by like an ordinary citizen. It's not like it's the police that are necessarily coming at the police.

00:54:39:14 - 00:54:43:01
Jonathan Schottler
Separation from us here in Berlin. And then jaywalking is yeah, then they're.

00:54:43:01 - 00:54:43:24
Ashton Schottler
Like, whatever.

00:54:43:24 - 00:55:13:09
John Simmerman
But what's funny is you guys both pull up jaywalking and, and what's great about that is I don't know if you know the history of jaywalking, but it's essentially a made up rule that in the law that came into place from the automobile industry when they started to pushback and resistance in the United States, and they were like, okay, we've got mothers and people protesting, you know, the number of kids being killed on the streets in in the United States.

00:55:13:09 - 00:55:34:07
John Simmerman
And this was back in the 19 teens in the 1920s and into the thirties. And it was literally a made up rule that was done and put forward by the automobile industry. So it's completely a made up rule and law that, you know, has been codified and that, oh, my gosh, you know, people aren't supposed to be in the streets.

00:55:34:07 - 00:55:51:06
John Simmerman
Well, actually, there's thousands of years of of precedent that would say, yeah, people are meant to be in the streets. It's the the interloper in the the invader of the space is in fact, the new invention. The the automobile.

00:55:51:06 - 00:56:02:10
Ashton Schottler
Yeah. It's it's it's you know, it's it's part of German culture for sure. I would say the whole, like rule following rule abiding aspect of it. It's just it's just part of living here.

00:56:02:10 - 00:56:18:01
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, but it used to it it makes life almost easier because you can always anticipate what everybody is going to do if everybody follows the rules, then you know what they're going to be doing in front of you, especially when that is with driving or riding a bicycle. They're turning on a bike. Almost everybody points their arm out saying, I'm turning here.

00:56:18:01 - 00:56:19:15
Jonathan Schottler
So it so.

00:56:20:04 - 00:56:24:07
John Simmerman
What I love to Ashton. So who does your thumbnails?

00:56:25:06 - 00:56:25:13
Ashton Schottler
Yeah.

00:56:25:27 - 00:56:41:13
John Simmerman
Yeah. Good job. You're amazing. Oh, awesome. Awesome stuff. And that video, the Verboten one, you know, popped out at me, you know, earlier today. I haven't had a chance to. To watch all your videos. Sorry, I. I been to see producing my own.

00:56:42:00 - 00:56:44:10
Ashton Schottler
But it was like a lot of work.

00:56:44:10 - 00:57:02:26
John Simmerman
I got so much work. I'm a11 person operation, too. And so it really is more than a full time job doing this. You mentioned your family and you mentioned Jonathan, your kids, plural. We have a surprise coming soon, right?

00:57:03:27 - 00:57:04:08
Ashton Schottler
Yeah.

00:57:04:08 - 00:57:05:06
John Simmerman
So surprised.

00:57:05:12 - 00:57:13:02
Ashton Schottler
You're right in. Yeah. Yeah. Number number two comes the spring. So. Yeah, that's it.

00:57:13:02 - 00:57:15:04
John Simmerman
Congratulations. Yes.

00:57:15:13 - 00:57:15:28
Jonathan Schottler
Thank you.

00:57:16:07 - 00:57:19:06
John Simmerman
Very good. Do we know what we're having or do we? Are we curious?

00:57:20:01 - 00:57:28:25
Ashton Schottler
It's a boy. We have a chicken boy. Yeah, Our son. Our older son. Jack isn't going to know what's going to about to hit him, I think. Yeah. Oh, world will be rocked.

00:57:28:28 - 00:57:29:26
Jonathan Schottler
Upside down, I.

00:57:29:26 - 00:57:45:18
Ashton Schottler
Think. Yeah, he's been. And, you know, for better or for worse, because we're so far away from family, you know, he gets on an uninterrupted mom and dad time all the time because that's just his world. And so I think he'll be in for a bit of a shock. Yeah. Yeah.

00:57:45:18 - 00:57:48:27
Jonathan Schottler
But I can put him aside on his kick bike and he can.

00:57:49:02 - 00:57:49:23
Ashton Schottler
Let it rip with.

00:57:49:24 - 00:57:50:06
Jonathan Schottler
This. Let it.

00:57:50:06 - 00:58:00:10
Ashton Schottler
Rip. Yeah. We, we, we jokingly Jonathan called him our outdoor dog because he's like outside of the park. That's where he's happiest. And so yeah, it'll be, I think it'll be really fun.

00:58:01:06 - 00:58:30:17
John Simmerman
So to close us out, what I'd love to have you do is both from your own perspectives. Tucker a little bit about what you think a global audience can learn from the experience that you're living in when it comes to creating a culture of activity, a community that really helps embrace and encourages and designs for more natural physical activity.

00:58:30:17 - 00:58:52:29
Jonathan Schottler
You go first. Yeah, I'll start this one. I think people can just kind of look at their day to day activities and think about what they're doing when they're getting in their car and driving somewhere, whether they're going to the store or they're going to go and visit a friend and what they're experiencing when they're in that vehicle and then do the exact same thing again on a bicycle or just by walking and kind of racer happiness and their motivation and everything at the start to finish.

00:58:53:08 - 00:59:28:24
Jonathan Schottler
And I think people are going to learn when they go somewhere under their own power. And they're actually, as the Germans would say, in the nature and being outside and fresh air, like they're going to be happier and more positive when they get there. And this type of activity is something that should help empower to ask for change, help the city, plan for better infrastructure, for people to spend more time outside, less time in their vehicles, and take advantage of the new biking opportunities specifically in the United States, because I'll use them as an example, because high speed bikes are basically every single e-bike.

00:59:28:24 - 00:59:48:28
Jonathan Schottler
They don't have the same regulations they have in Europe, so they can cross much bigger distances just with mobility than they can here in Europe. So even though the United States is much more spread out, it is harder to get places. They can get a 28 mile per hour e-bike and get where they're going. I think much more of a fun and healthy manner.

00:59:48:28 - 01:00:00:05
Jonathan Schottler
I mean, that would be my suggestion. Just look at how the other world manages this and look at what they're doing and think about how they could take that and apply it to their lives and help encourage change.

01:00:00:19 - 01:00:21:10
John Simmerman
Jonathan Yeah, I wasn't sure that or I wasn't aware of that limitation. On the E-bike assist being set so low. So I have a turn GSD and yeah, where it's limited at as you mentioned, at 20 miles per hour, but yours is there in Europe. It's limited, much, much lower. So yeah, I was shocked actually.

01:00:22:21 - 01:00:42:19
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, it's 25 kilometers an hour in Europe, which is I think what, 14 miles an hour or so, which unfortunately is just below the minimum speed limit you'll find in those towns, which is 30 I mentioned in the video, I would like e-bikes to be limited to 30 kilometers an hour just so there's not these awkward opportunities for vehicles to have to overtake them.

01:00:43:00 - 01:00:52:29
Jonathan Schottler
But a lot of people in the comments did point out that a vehicle will overtake a bicycle, even if they're going 30 because they're a bicycle. They just want to get in front of them and forget about them because that's depending.

01:00:52:29 - 01:00:53:24
John Simmerman
On your location.

01:00:53:24 - 01:01:17:09
Jonathan Schottler
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Depending on your location. But you can get high speed bikes in Europe that go 45 kilometers an hour or around 30 miles an hour, which is fast for an e-bike. Yeah, there are regulations. You need a license plate, you need mirrors, you need a horn, you need a specific helmet. You do everything but the United States, as you pointed out, 20 miles an hour is a standard e-bike speed, which is pretty quick by comparison.

01:01:17:22 - 01:01:39:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. So, Ashton, I want to sort of jump off of of what Jonathan just said and and reframing your question just a little bit in the sense that as as a female and as a mom, what do communities, you know, kind of really need to do to address some of the concerns that you have?

01:01:39:04 - 01:02:01:08
Ashton Schottler
Well, you know, I think whenever I read a lot of the comments from Americans on some of the things we've talked about on our channel, especially when it comes to urban planning, especially when it comes to lifestyle issues, a lot of Americans may have a very fair point, which is, you know, I like suburbia, I like being spread out.

01:02:01:08 - 01:02:27:21
Ashton Schottler
I don't want to live next to all of that, you know, chaos and noise and activity. I don't want to live next to a parking lot Like, that's the whole reason I'm choosing to live out in suburbia. And that comment to me always resonates, is like there just seems to be this perception that there is this giant canyon between the way that cities are built in Europe and the way that cities are built in the United States.

01:02:27:21 - 01:03:06:19
Ashton Schottler
I think one of the things that I would advocate for is that there isn't as big of a difference as you think there is. And Europe was once a lot different looking, too. And it just takes enough people who are willing to want to have either a cycling centric culture or if you want to reframe it as a kids centric culture, that if enough people will push for a particular lifestyle or a particular form of mobility, then we will start to put money behind it.

01:03:06:19 - 01:03:37:26
Ashton Schottler
Then we'll start to put planning behind it. Then we'll start to put it behind the ways that we're putting together our cities. And so from a perspective, as a mom, you know, I want our sons to grow up in a community where they feel empowered, independent and safe and, you know, the flip side of that is, is that like as a mom, I'm not going to be taxing my children to practices they go by themselves on their bicycle.

01:03:38:09 - 01:04:13:20
Ashton Schottler
My friends, you know, they can go out with their friends. They go to the ice cream shop and go to the bakery and go to school. And again, I have more freedom as a mom because I'm not spending hours of my day shuttling my children from point A to point B and then, you know, that starts to spill into, well, if kids are on a bicycle from an early age, then again, like we talked about, you know, if they're on a bicycle, then when they become adults, they start looking for children on bicycles because they used to be a kid on a bicycle.

01:04:13:29 - 01:04:40:15
Ashton Schottler
And so then that becomes more safe and it's like there's a domino effect that starts to happen and it's possible to do it. Even in suburbia. You just have to have enough people who say, We want this and we want to have, you know, funding behind it and thought behind it because the spillover effect eventually there's going to be a tipping point where it really starts to affect so many other aspects of our city.

01:04:41:09 - 01:04:43:17
Ashton Schottler
And that's something that I think is totally within reach.

01:04:44:29 - 01:05:24:24
John Simmerman
Any sage advice, you know, from the perspective of sort of de-escalating the narratives? Because what tends to happen, you know, as you well know here, especially in the United States, but not not only I mean, we see a little bit of this in Australia and New Zealand too, is that it becomes an othering sort of conversation that happens and you get this fight between, you know, the the that is, you know, advocating for safer communities and wanting to be able to to be able to have all ages and abilities, walk and bike to meaningful destinations.

01:05:24:24 - 01:05:51:23
John Simmerman
And then the other side is, is like all of a sudden outrageous with you know, indignation of of feeling like they're being discriminated against. Of course, they are the status quo, trying to fight to keep the status quo of motoring everywhere, driving everywhere. Any advice that you can think of either from the research that you've done, either from, you know, doing or, you know, doing research and study and NIMBYism and stuff like that.

01:05:51:23 - 01:06:13:17
John Simmerman
But also how do we how do we kind of like lower that temperature, be able to have conflict and conversation without it devolving into us versus them? Because I don't know how productive it is if we're just warring, you know, groups protesting on the streets, you know, three sending insults at each other.

01:06:15:11 - 01:06:41:23
Ashton Schottler
Well, I would say, you know, like I said before, my research for my PhD was on low income housing and specifically the low income housing tax credit. And there was one thing that I remember a developer had said to me that I thought was like totally impactful. And it was that the low housing tax credit can be used for two types of housing loans and housing specifically.

01:06:41:23 - 01:07:05:06
Ashton Schottler
That's for families and that's where the majority of the NIMBY pushback is headed towards. But the second type of housing you can build with it is senior housing. And interestingly that's the type of housing that doesn't get as much pushback because in a way, we all get old and we all get elderly and we could potentially need this type of care.

01:07:05:20 - 01:07:46:27
Ashton Schottler
And so when we're talking about active towns and creating an infrastructure, I think one of the things that makes me so excited about things like e-bikes, like I said, you know, my parents, my mom recently retired and she bought an e-bike. And I think we need to think about, you know, it's just 30 something year old me commuting to work, But whether it's kids or whether it's the elderly or whether it's, you know, there there are so many different members of our community that could benefit from better pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and thinking about all of the areas of life that this could hold.

01:07:46:27 - 01:08:21:15
Ashton Schottler
What, like just, you know, when you get older, having another way to get around and be connected in your community, which is so important for your health, it's so important for your, you know, whether it's physical health or even mental health of just really still, you not being sequestered away in a house in suburbia, but being able to go out to a coffee shop and meet a friend and, you know, someday, hopefully not anytime soon, but I will eventually get old and maybe I can't drive as well anymore, but maybe I can still ride in E-bike and and think.

01:08:21:15 - 01:08:21:27
Ashton Schottler
Yeah.

01:08:22:07 - 01:08:36:20
Jonathan Schottler
I think I think that plus just looking at people on the bikes and realize these aren't just people. That's a lot of a lot of Americans for example look at somebody a bike and look down on them because they don't have a car. They just assume, oh, they must not be able to afford a car. They're not important.

01:08:37:10 - 01:08:59:14
Jonathan Schottler
And that's a narrative I've heard more than once before. But I think people need to look at all these people trying to get around by bicycle and understand, you know, it could be a father or a mother, a brother or sister or a son to somebody. And like these are people are trying to get around them. If they're upset that they're on bicycles on the road, then these drivers should also be helping ask for change.

01:08:59:29 - 01:09:16:13
Jonathan Schottler
Push for separated bike lanes. And if they choose to use their vehicle, which is totally fine, then they can now be on a road that is separated from the bike paths and we can all live together in harmony instead of just constantly battling each other. Who gets to be on the road and what are the rules and all of that.

01:09:16:15 - 01:09:16:28
Ashton Schottler
Yeah.

01:09:17:12 - 01:09:27:27
John Simmerman
You know, it's great. Esther and Jonathan, thank you so very much. It's been an absolute joy getting to know you a little bit better. I can't wait to come visit you. Yeah, you.

01:09:27:27 - 01:09:29:22
Jonathan Schottler
Are more than welcome and thank her for her.

01:09:30:09 - 01:09:45:09
Ashton Schottler
You ever find yourself in in the southwestern region of Germany once more? I know you are going to be up in Leipzig. That's quite a distance from here. Yeah, but if you ever find yourself in the Black Forest, please let us know. You have someone that you can for sure. Come and visit any time, and.

01:09:45:09 - 01:09:45:28
Jonathan Schottler
We'll find a bike.

01:09:46:06 - 01:09:46:23
Ashton Schottler
And we'll find it.

01:09:46:23 - 01:10:04:12
John Simmerman
And we'll all have my bike with me. Always travel with my folding bike. Me So I always have a bike. When I get off the train, I can just roll right into the into the town, into the village and yeah, what a joy. It would be fun to, you know, do an on bike interview when that happens.

01:10:04:19 - 01:10:07:13
Jonathan Schottler
That would be awesome. I mean, my favorite kind of interview.

01:10:07:25 - 01:10:15:22
John Simmerman
Yeah Fantastic. Well, again, thank you so very much and congratulations once again on the success of the Black Forest family YouTube channel.

01:10:16:18 - 01:10:17:10
Jonathan Schottler
Thank you very much.

01:10:17:11 - 01:10:19:10
Ashton Schottler
Thank you. Thanks having us tonight. This is really.

01:10:19:10 - 01:10:35:06
John Simmerman
Great. Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Ashton and Jonathan. And if you did, please give the thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

01:10:35:14 - 01:10:57:11
John Simmerman
And I do need to send a huge thank you out to several of you who are watching this channel. I actually recommended the Black Forest family as a YouTube channel that I should see and check out and ask if they would be interested in coming on the podcast. And they were. It worked. Again, thank you so much for tuning in and that suggestion and please keep those suggestions coming.

01:10:57:11 - 01:11:22:08
John Simmerman
They are very, very helpful. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and again sending a huge thank you out to all my active towns ambassadors supporting the channel on patron buy me a coffee YouTube super thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

01:11:22:20 - 01:11:31:19
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.