Bicycles for rent could become as common as newspaper stands and mail boxes on prefix = st1 /Germany's street corners if a scheme launched by Deutsche Bahn is successful.   The German rail operator has launched a bicycle-hire scheme designed for simple one-way trips.   "It's a new concept,"said Andreas Knie, head of the project.   Users must first register with Call-A-Bike at a cost of 15 euros(US$14.7). With a simple phone call, they can hire one of the many bikes parked outside stations, at a cost of 3 to 5 cents per minute. At the end of their journey, they ring a computer and tell it where the bike is parked.   The bikes are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.   No one will be breaking speed records with Call-A-Bike bicycles. They weigh in at 25 kilograms, at least double the weight of a normal bicycle, though they do have eight gears .   "They are pretty heavy, but we don't want people taking them on the train or into the subway," Knie said.   They are also designed with parts that do not fit a normal bicycle. Even the screws are irregular and the bike looks so odd that thieves would stand out.   Vandalism and theft have led to the downfall of previous schemes which date back toAmsterdam's 1966"White Bike"scheme.   In that short-lived experiment, anti-establishment groups painted bikes white and left them around the Dutch capital.   However, many were taken permanently and repainted, while the police took away others on the basis that ownerless bikes were street rubbish.   Copenhagen, Vienna and Helsinki also have free bike schemes, in which users deposit a coin in Copenhagen's case 20 crowns(US$2.50)--to free a bike from a rack.   "The advantage these schemes have is ease of use. But because they're so cheap, people tend to hold on to the bikes and then there are none on the streets,"the person in charge said.   Oslo is also planning a bike-hire system where users will pay a symbolic fee of 50 Norwegian crowns(US$6.50)for unlimited use in the city for a year.   Users will buy an electronic identity card as a key that will register when the bike is parked or taken from a rack. How many European countries have already launched the free bike schemes?
Four. Five. Six. Seven.