Sydney  - With Australians now buying more bicycles than cars, you would think that cycling to work would be accelerating at a similar rate.

It's not.

Of the commuting done in Sydney, only around 1 per cent is by bike. In comparison, in some Scandinavian cities the proportion of those cycling to work is around one-third.

Statistician and avid cyclist Dorothy Robinson has pondered this conundrum. She reckons that repealing laws passed in the 1990s requiring cyclists to wear helmets would get bikes out of garages and onto the roads.

Hamburg  - Every bride wants to be the most beautiful woman at her wedding. Her dress, shoes, veil and flowers are carefully selected, ordered, purchased and prepared in advance.

But the bride's outfit is not complete until her make-up is on and her hair is styled. However, women should not go overboard on their big day. Hair and makeup do not require a lot of preparation.

Frankfurt  - There are many ways couples can save money when planning their wedding.

"The bridal gown most certainly can be rented for a reasonable price or bought second-hand," said Friederike Mauritz, chairwoman of the association of German wedding planners in Frankfurt. A second-hand dress may have to be altered, so that cost should be taken into consideration when considering the purchase.

Munich - Art auction houses are not all gloomy about prospects in 2009 despite the global financial and economic crisis.

While art works remained unsold at auctions last autumn and the flurry of record prices in recent years has given way to a more sober-minded market, art buyers with bags of money are still out there, said the president of Sotheby's Germany.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni became stars of France's comic book scene last year.

The cover of the recently published book, Carla and Carlito, depicts the French first lady carrying an image of Sarkozy in a baby sling.

It has sold 100,000 copies and demand continues, the newspaper Le Parisien reported in late December. The book depicts Bruni as the real power in the Elysee Palace and reveals that her control over him is so strong that the staff refer to him as Carlito or little Carla.

Berlin  - Couples need not wear matching balloon-silk jogging suits to be an eyesore, fashionistas warn. Identical pullovers or outdoor jackets are off-putting as well. Matching clothes make couples look too similar and interchangeable, which runs counter to style sense.

"Men and women have been wearing different clothes for centuries. Though women wear trousers nowadays, the desire to blur differences with matching outfits results in one of them no longer looking like a man, or no longer like a woman," explained Berlin fashion expert Bernhard Roetzel.