• On to the important stuff: bike shops! This is an update of the stuff I put on the "LBS options in Zurich" thread a while ago, since I've found a couple more and had a bit more to do with some of them. Hot carbon road bikes abound in Switzerland, but they can be really expensive. As @chiroshi says, buying a bike in euros by going to, or shipping from, Germany is a good deal at the moment, or even just a bike from a euro country from a Swiss shop can seem like a bit better value than you might expect. But the usual sorts of shops selling them are pretty easy to find, these are some more characterful shops in Zurich that I'm aware of.

    velo-citta.ch/ I think they mostly recondition old frames with new, basic-ish groupsets (could be good for a decent weekday bike), the guy is really nice, he may sell you some of the old bits from his "collection" if you ask nicely. Otherwise it's mostly a repair shop and doesn't have a big stock of new components.

    urbanrider.ch/ it's a fixie/single speed shop, sells some nice colorful bits, more down to earth than my original impression!

    caprez-zueri5.ch/index.php/ho­me is a strange hybrid of a bike shop and old-skool electrical shop - there are some old disk wheels for purchase in the window if that's your thing, and also some vintage hoovers

    raddna.ch/ is a very serious looking swiss-designer-style bike shop, but the guys are nice and helpful and speak English, and they sell mainly Genesis bikes (the steel models so far). This would be my first port of call for a nice bike, unless I wanted carbon.

    All of the above are a few minutes from each other, near the station in central Zurich, so worth a quick look around.

    veloschmiede.com/ is out of the town centre, lovely vintage roadster in the window when I went past, and the website looks promising, think they're mostly into pimping pretty much any old bike they get.

    http://www.zweiradgeber.ch/ haven't been here, but it looks a bit different to regular bike shops and was recommended by velo-citta for resprays.

    http://www.velo-zuerich.ch/ weird and wonderful shop in the suburbs of Zurich, it occupies the first two floors of an office building, the downstairs is now almost completely taken over by E-bikes, and the interesting ones are upstairs (but it's not like a shop where you can just go upstairs, you've got to somehow indicate that you're interested in the old bikes). The webpage is not right up to date, but the Coppis are still there.

    ricardo.ch is the swiss equivalent of ebay and looks like a decent source of projects or weekday bikes. The compactness of Switzerland means you probably can pick it up pretty easily. Sellers don't put much info for some reason.

About

Avatar for xrayspex @xrayspex started