We ate dinner with him once in T�bingen, and Marie mentioned something about being glad she hadn't been able to find a bike because it wouldn't be that practical here (we live at the top of a mountain). He someone thought that we still wanted bikes though, and suggested that we take a chain cutter (which we had obviously brought with us from the US...) and cut the locks off of some old bikes sitting in front of the cafeteria that had signs on them saying they would be carried away by the city if they weren't claimed. We said we wouldn't feel comfortable doing that, but a few days later Wili called Marie and told her he had found 3 bikes for us and gave us directions to where he had hidden them. We found the bikes, laughed at the rust buildup on them, then set about trying to ride them. After I managed to jump up on mine (the seat was way too high and rusted so it couldn't be moved), I tried to shift gears and the entire bike stopped moving because the chain had wrapped itself around the gears. We got it going, but it quickly did the same thing again. Since I couldn't even push it in that condition, we decided to leave that one there and take the other two.
Once we had pushed them most of the way up the mountain (them pushing the bikes, me carrying jackets and backpacks), we came to a flatter spot and Marie decided to hop on to hers. Her steering didn't work properly, though, and she ended up going off of the path and careening down the very steep, long ditch next to the path. Her brakes also didn't work, though, and her seat was too high for her feet to touch the ground, so she had no way to stop. She screamed the whole way and managed to top the bike over and do a semi-graceful rolling fall into the grass before she got to the line of trees at the bottom of the ditch. Needless to say, we have not yet found an opportune time to go on our first bike ride... I think we're all a little to afraid for our lives!