Bicycle workshop as a meeting place: “This is my therapy”

There's not much going on yet in the backyard of the Urbanstrasse neighborhood house in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Two black plastic ravens look out from the roof of the ReCycle bicycle repair shop, which is located in a small garage. It's early afternoon and the garage door is open. Colorful stickers from various civil rights and neighborhood initiatives decorate the entrance. Something hanging crookedly from the ceiling reads “Learning Workshop” in large yellow letters. There is a bicycle owner standing in front of the garage whose handlebars are causing problems. Al Kassem Saleem offers her to leave the bike, go for a coffee and come back later. He'll take a look at it in the meantime.

Al Kassem launched the self-help workshop in 2018. It is his third project of this kind. He began his involvement almost 11 years ago in Hanger1, an emergency shelter for refugees on the site of the former Tempelhof Airport. Al Kassem, who fled Syria, was one of the residents in 2015. He couldn't do much there and wasn't allowed to work. But he wanted to do something, not just wait. So he set up a kind of café in a side room of the hangar, a place where people could drink coffee and talk to each other. “The thing about the bikes was a coincidence,” he remembers. One day someone stopped by the cafe and donated a few bikes.

Local people were able to borrow the bikes and move around a little more freely and see other places. But often when they brought the bikes back, something was broken, says Al Kassem. So he set about repairing it himself. At the beginning it was primarily a trial and error process, equipped only with a screwdriver and pliers. Over time, more tools were added, most of them given as gifts and picked up at flea markets. Al Kassem teaches himself how to repair things and keeps trying until the problem can be fixed. “I’m always looking for a solution,” he says.

And if he can't find one? “Then there’s another solution!” he laughs and holds up a broken headlight. Like this one, most of the bike parts in the garage here are damaged or broken. But what at first glance seems unusable, Al Kassem can reuse it, repairing the parts or using individual components. This means that hardly anything has to be thrown away and no new spare parts have to be bought.

The garage is full of collected bike parts. A pile of hoses lies on the floor, next to a pile of fender struts. There are red taillights in one box and white front lights in another. On the shelves and drawers there are chainrings, handlebars, spokes, bells, locks. It seems a bit chaotic but at the same time everything is well sorted. There are three warehouses on the farm with bicycles that Al Kassem rescues from the streets or people bring in as donations.

The bicycle workshop existed in Hangar1 until 2018, as did a second project in the “Gärtnerei” in the “Schlesische 27” cultural center. The workshop here on Urbanstrasse is open for three hours every Tuesday afternoon. The neighborhood house provides the garage, occasionally purchases tools and spare parts and seeks funding for ReCycle. The offer is based on the voluntary work of Al Kassem and other volunteers and is free of charge - donations are welcome.

Little by little more and more people arrive. With and without wheels. Many people know each other and the place, some are there for the first time. When you look across the yard, you see different scenes: here two helpers are working on a bike together, there a small group is sitting together, smoking and chatting. Someone brought drinks, someone else brought coffee and waffles from the neighborhood cafe. It is shared with everyone who is there. A person who was looking for a bike found what he was looking for and is now repairing it with support. A woman with a shopping scooter greets Al Kassem and takes out vegetables that she has brought for him. “Best person in the world,” says Al Kassem about her.

Al Kassem often talks about other people - about Alex and Jona, who support the project with him, about friends, family and other people who get involved in different ways and support the workshop. “In the beginning there was a seed and then more and more grew from it.”

One of the people helping today is Buruoj. She has been here several times and came to the place through friends. She previously had no idea about repairing bicycles. She came back because everyone was so warm to her. “A bit like a family,” she says. The place reminds her of neighborhood houses like the ones she knows from Palestine. "That's still a lot missing in Berlin. A place like this where people come together."

It's 5:30 p.m. and the voice of the Lebanese singer Fairuz is playing on a jukebox. The workshop operation is still in full swing, with Al Kassem in the middle of it, supporting sometimes here and sometimes there. Children keep appearing in the yard - each time Al Kassem leaves everything behind. “One moment, please,” he says, takes one of the candy bar packets that are at hand and runs to the children. "Hello. How are you? How was your day?" he greets her, sitting in a crouch, the chocolate hidden behind his back. Almost all children know him and know that chocolate is now available. But it's not just about that, says Al Kassem. It is important to him to show the children that he notices them and listens to them.

“I give what I need,” he emphasizes again and again, meaning that this work makes him feel good. Tuesday is his “favorite day” here, and although the workshop is actually only open until 6 p.m., the lights in the garage stay on much longer. It is not uncommon for Al Kassem to stay until the next morning. "This is my therapy. Here I can do whatever I want. It gives me peace."

Editor's note: In consultation and at the request of some of those involved, surnames were mostly omitted.