offtopic: recumbent bicycles from europe ?

[mea@nic.funet.fi]

Hello,

I am near by, but even I have to keep my fingers off the computer
every now and then.  (But having a leased line to home does make
that a bit difficult to do ;-) )

Anyway, I have searched far and wide for a special form of bicycle
called recumbent.  I can find perhaps a dozen manufacturers in USA,
and I have seen one made by Mannessman (Germany), but I have found
no references to any manufacturers of such bicycles in web within
europe (EC to be precise).

One retailer I visited today in Helsinki said they know that a couple
of manufacturers in Belgium make such bikes, none of the retailers
knew anybody that imported any such bike to Finland...

Could any of Benelux/German/French people in here help me locate
manufacturers of this type of bicycles ?


Oh yes, somebody asked a year or so ago, how much Finland has paved
roads for bicyclists (or something such).

I used web-pages of "Tiehallinto" (http://www.tieh.fi/eindex.htm)
In the statistics about public roads managed by them there are about
3800 km of light roads (e.g. for bicycles besides the public roads),
and some 78000 km of public roads.  I tried to find references to
for example Helsinki's light-road network, including statistics,
but could not come up with anything definite.  I think the greater
Helsinki area has equal amounts of bicycle roads as the state
has built.  That is, a lot of them.

/Matti Aarnio <mea@nic.funet.fi>