I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - itβs pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot thatβd be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either canβt ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning βswimmingβ made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
From a logistics point of view we need to keep the population density and shorter ways in mind. In Germany we have a deposit system for the crates and bottles and because of the short ways and high deposit most of them find their way back. But with a thousand miles between brewery and customer that system becomes tricky to implement. Also cans only weigh a fraction of a glass bottle.
So for a local brewery that is only distributing locally glass bottles in crates are a good system, but not so much for longer ranges. Also a reuse system needs a critical minimum size to be viable.
It was interesting to see how much locality there was in the beer consumption. I wouldnβt call them monopolies, but with a few exceptions, it seemed to me that people tended to drink beer from local breweries. I was living in Munich, and I donβt know if the close proximity of the breweries had a greater impact than in the countryside. I noticed it most when I first visited Dresden, and all of the beer was suddenly different brands.
