Blog - Plug Me In

10 July 201618 August 2016 by Wiebe

Day 116 | The Atlantic road to Trondheim

Day 116 | Friday July 8

Today I had to do 220km from Hustad to Trondheim and the road to there promised to be beautiful as I needed to pass the Atlantic Ocean Road. The Atlantic Road is built on several small islands and skerries, which are connected by several causeways, viaducts and eight bridges. My host Harald told me it was just a 30 minute drive to there and after a while I started to see a lot of campers and busses with Japanese tourists. I thought I would make it to the road in a few minutes but when I drove over the iconic bridge I found out I’ve been driving on the Atlantic Road for a already some kilometers.

After I passed the bridge (which I knew from many blogs) I stopped to get some pictures. I have to say that the road is more beautiful from the air and a bit disappointing from the ground. Still I found some nice spots.

https://www.facebook.com/PlugMeIn/photos/a.357717747770627.1073741829.211949022347501/508556416020092/?type=3&theater

I continued my way to Trondheim. Last night I send a request to the only offer I had there and in the morning I didn’t have a reply yet so was not sure if I would have a place to stay. I had to do a recharge underway and on chargemap I found they have a Gronn Kontakt charging station in Valsøytunet, luckily it was working with my car this time. The station was located on the parking of a camping with restaurant. As it was lunchtime I wanted to check if they could offer me some lunch. The owner of the Valsøytunet restaurant and camping was happy to provide me with a fish salade! On the terrace of the camping I had a nice view over the lake, I imagined it would be a beautiful spot for a camper. Check out this movie of the campsite:

Valsøya 2020 – rått reiselivsprosjekt i Midt-Norge

After lunch the car had enough range to reach Trondheim. A few weeks earlier in Oslo I went to the presentation of the Detroit Electric SP:01, read that blog here. There I met the owners of Carpoint Norge, they are the importer of Detroit Electric. They have their office in Trondheim and invited me to come over. I got there around 4 o’clock.

Geir, one of the guys I met before wanted to know everything about the trip from Oslo to here so I shared all my experiences. I also told him that I was not sure if I had a place to stay tonight so he quickly made some phone calls. A few minutes later he got a call back and was happy to tell me that the owner of the Radisson Blu Hotel Trondheim offered me a room! The hotel was actually fully booked but still they could give me a place to sleep! So great.

I left my car at the Carpoint garage to charge there and Geir brought me to the hotel. Around 8 o’clock he picked me up again and together with his wife and a friend we had dinner at a restaurant. Geir is a busy man and involved in many businessclubs and also knew the owner of this restaurant who hooked me up with free food! What a day.

After dinner we went to a nightclub, the Pianobar. There was an Australian women singing and playing on the piano. She was seriously good and when she heard there was a Dutchmen in the club she sang a song in my language! The song is called ‘Tulpen uit Amsterdam’ (Tulips from Amsterdam). I felt a bit stupid that I only knew the refrain of this song but it was cool that I could sing these few words in my own language. I’m grateful that Geir took all this effort to entertain me and made my stay in Trondheim one to remember.

We had a lot of drinks at it was only the second time this trip that I got drunk. The first time being in Germany in the first month so the beers and gintonics hit me hard this time.

Pictures from today

The Atlantic Ocean Road

Crossing The Atlantic Ocean Road

Near The Atlantic Ocean Road

The restaurant where I charged the car and myself

The lunch I was offered

View from the campsite

The camping

Geir

Carpoint Norge

My car in the garage, definitely not for sale though

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9 July 2016 by Wiebe

Day 115 | Picture perfect Hustad

After breakfast a journalist from Sunnmorsposten came to the B&B to interview me. He heard about me from a friend and thought it was an important project. If you speak Norwegian you can read it here (Premium), if you don’t then put it through google translate 😉 It’s worth reading.

Today was a relaxing day, I only had to do 115km to Hustad so I didn’t need to worry about charging and arrived fairly early at my hosts Harald & Randi. They life in an impressive house in a village of just 1200 inhabitants. They lived and worked on a farm the biggest part of their lives but because of health issues they decided to change that so they build this brand new house. For me the size of it and the space you have around it, is unimaginable in Holland.

They have 2 daughters and one son. One of her daughters has a Dutch boyfriend and his son Hans Ivar came by later for dinner. Harald and Randi have a strong connection with Holland, they found it very similar to Norway and like to go there for holidays.

Because it was early I had time do some periodic tasks, I cleaned the car from the inside and gave the outside a wash for the first time this trip. It looks brand new.

For dinner they introduced me to some kind of fishballs, I’m not a big fish eater so it’s alway an surprise if I like it or not but these ones were excellent.

After dinner I went for a drive with Harald through town and looked for some photo opportunities. A few 100 meters we drove though a unpaved road, luckily Harald knew exactly where are the stones were so he guided me through it. At the end of it we took some great pictures, see below.

When we got back I watched Germany – France together with his son. Unbelievable that the final is Portugal – France, who would ever thought that. I’m not a fan of Portugal with all their dirty players and Christina so let’s hope France will win the Euro.

The B&B were I spend the night

Harald's house in Hustad

The view

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7 July 2016 by Wiebe

Day 114 | What happens in Alesund

Day 114 | Wednesday July 6

Last night I charged the car on 10 ampere and this was actually the first time I needed to that. Normally I charge on 16A. I didn’t know exactly how long it will take to fully charge the car and I when I checked the status in the morning I found out the battery was on 85%. This was after 13 hours. I had a long day with multiple pit stops so I decided to start driving.

I thanked my host Asgeir for helping me and left. My end destination today was Alesund. When I wanted to enter the address of tonights host I discovered I didn’t had a place to stay yet! Stupid mistake. A few days ago I planned the coming days, send a request to someone who offered me energy in Alesund and put in in my agenda. However the host didn’t reply yet.

It was a 220km drive to Alesund so I needed to charge a few times. My first stop was in Nordfjordeid. I found a supermarket with free wifi and started contacting the people in Alesund who plugged me in. The 2 options I had there both couldn’t help me because they were away. One of them felt a bit guilty and told me I had to get in touch with him if I couldn’t find a place to stay.

Charging in Nordfjordeid was not so easy, the regular EV station didn’t connect with my car. There were plenty of normal 220V stations but they all required a pass to access and I didn’t have one, normally they can be opened with a key which I do own. One of the non-accessible stations was in front of the city hall so I went in there to see if they could be at help. They couldn’t find they pass but had a normal socket were I could charge. I did so for a few hours and then drove to the next city with charging stations, Volda.

Volda is a beautiful looking town on the end of a fjord. Again I had the same problem with the regular EV stations so I charged on a normal socket, this made my day last long. Still I had no place to stay so I contacted Espen, he answered “Be right back…” A few minutes later I received an SMS from booking.com saying a B&B had been booked for me! Espen wrote me that he had booked this for me on his costs, including breakfast and possibility to charge! What a great guy.

He was at his mothers place, 2.5 hours drive from Alesund but he still wanted to meet me. He made the effort to drive all the way down and pick me up at the ferry. He drives an platinum Tesla Model S with auto pilot, first time I saw that!

We drove to the B&B to start charging the car, it was around 10pm that we arrived there. The B&B is a high school during winter and in the summer they convert it so they can earn some money. I didn’t had lunch today and was pretty hungry so we drove to a Burger King. First time this journey I got some junkfood and it was actually pretty good.

Espen took me for a sightseeing trip in his Tesla and showed me the Autopilot function. The autopilot makes the car drive automatically. I was surprised how well it worked. Espen told me that he doesn’t trust it always as the system looks at the lines on the road and here in Norway they disappear sometimes. If that’s the case next to a cliff it’s better not to use it… Almost autonomous we drove to the top of Alesund with an amazing view over the city. Alesund has almost completely burned down in 1904. German emperor Wilhelm II was a great fan of Norway and send food and emergency supplies to the city. Also he send a couple of Norwegian construction workers and architects. These architects were influenced by the Jugendstill which was a populair style at that time. That’s why Alesund has been reconstructed in this Jugendstill style giving it the nickname ‘Jugend Town of Norway’. It feels like wandering through a German town.

While it’s a great city I found it surprising that they didn’t had any charging stations, for a city with 50.000 citizens and many tourists they should at least have a few.

Around midnight Espen had to take his ferry back to his wife, mother and children and we said goodbye. I am very grateful to him for making the effort to come meet me and helping me survive.

Pictures of today

Chargespot in Voda

Mountains around Voda

This boat sailed here from Australia! Crazy.

Jugend Town

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6 July 2016 by Wiebe

Day 112 & 113 | Underground vacuum cleaner

Day 112 | Monday July 4

Last night my host Kristian got in touch with a lot of companies with the question if I could interview them and some answered very quick and positive. This morning Agnes could make some time to answer a few questions. Agnes is the founder of Bærekraftige liv. This is a community of people who take care of each other and handle resiliences in their neighborhood. For example in Norway there are 3 major supermarkets who basically decided what Norwegians eat. It’s hard to tell where the food comes from. The community decided to start producing their own food and sell this within the community.

After I interviewed Agnes I went back to Kristian’s home and worked all day. For dinner they served crab and it was the first time I had this. I thought it was more fun to brake it open then to eat it.

Day 113 | Tuesday July 5

I was welcomed by BIR Nett, Norway’s second biggest waste management company. They are putting in place a completely new system to collect garbage, called ‘Bossnett’. It is an automated system that transports waste underground using air pressure.

They brought me to one of the 2 collection terminals. Right now one is in place and the other one will be finished in 3 years (including the infrastructure). How it works is that citizens or companies bring their waste to a bin on the street. In the city there is always a bin within 100 meters. You can open it with a pass, drop your garbage in the bin and it falls into a bigger container. Two times a day the content is sucked through a pipe by vacuum! This pipe has a diameter of 50 meters and the machine that sucks the garbage has the power equivalent to 9000 vacuum cleaners. In the terminal the waste is collected and stored in large containers. These containers are then picked up and transferred to various recycling facilities, depending on the type of waste they contain.

It was time to leave Bergen. My next stop was 220km away so I knew it was going to be a long day as I had to recharge somewhere, and that point came a bit earlier as I expected. Because it was raining I lost a lot of range. I knew there was a chargepoint in Førde but I just couldn’t make that. I stopped in a tiny town and looked for a possibility to charge. I found a self-service gas station where on the side a socket was placed on the wall. There was nobody there so I thought it would be ok to take some electricity. After an hour I had 30% and was sure that I could make it to Førde. Once there I found a Gronn Kontakt station. These guys gave me a key so I could charge for free at their stations so within a short time I had enough to get to my host Asgeir in Eikefjorden. Asgeir’s address didn’t show up in my navigation so he picked me up in the centre.

Asgeir is a teacher at a high school and teaches students how to be an electrician. He thought my journey was a special project so that’s why he wanted to help me, he didn’t think that I would actually come to his place. He lives in an unique place, on the foot of a mountain with a view over the lake, quite astonishing.

My video about the Wohnwagon that went viral didn’t go unnoticed by some people and Vincent Everts, trendwatcher and EV-enthusiast wanted to know more about this. He has interviewed me before and in the first week of the trip I stayed at his place. He wanted to know how it went viral and was interested in the statistics of the video. Via Skype he interviewed me and I will post the video once he publishes it.

Pictures of these days

The view from Christine & Kristian's house

Crab

The hut where I slept

Gas station which "provided" me with electricity

Asgeir's house

Asgeir

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4 July 20164 July 2016 by Wiebe

Day 111 | The top of Bergen

Day 111 | Sunday July 3

After a good night of sleep my hosts took me on a sightseeing and hiking trip through Bergen. Yesterday, with all the delays, we didn’t talk so much so today I had the time to get to know them better. Kristian works as an engineer at Norway’s biggest oil producer. His job is to find new bubbles of oil or gas and see it it’s suitable to drill. To compensate this he drives an electric car. His wife Christine works as a psychologist for children. Together they have 2 little girls, 4 and 6 years old.

At breakfast Christine told me that she know that dutch people have hagelslag for breakfast. These are chocolate sprinkles which we put on bread. Although this is not very nutritious food Christine could tell me that Dutch kids in general eat very healthy. Hagelslag is a returning theme in this journey and I can’t figure out why. I have a few boxes supply with me but they are finished since a few weeks. It’s hard.

In Bergen we went to the top of the hill with a funicular. I can’t remember I have been in one before and it is a fun experience. The wagon is pulled up a few kilometers with an electric wheel and brings you to a height were you have beautiful sights over the city.
On the top there was a playground for little children with statues of trolls everywhere. Trolls seem to be important in the Norwegian culture. Christine stayed at the playground and with Kristian I took the train back and he showed me Bryggen (the warf). It is a series of idyllic hanseatic buildings which has been on the UNESCO world heritage list since 1979. Every house has a different color which reminded me of Nyhavn in Copenhagen.

Close to Bryggen was a fish harbor, they sold crabs with a 2 meter diameter and parts of whales. Although the market looked nice it was more adjusted to tourists and it didn’t feel very authentic.
We went for a hike to the top of Stoltzekleiven. It took us about an hour to get there and on the top we had the nicest views. We wanted to do another hike but because of heavy rain we decided to return home.

When I opened my laptop I was kind of shocked. Last Wednesday I posted this short movie about the Wohnwagon in Austria. Apparently A LOT of people liked this idea and shared it and it got HALF A MILLION views! Pretty amazing. A few days ago I had ‘just’ 1.100 fans on my page and now I am already on 7.500! It’s crazy what a little movie can do and I have no idea were this will end, at the moment people are still watching and sharing it.

https://www.facebook.com/PlugMeIn/videos/505244663017934/

Images of today

Kristian on the top

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3 July 20163 July 2016 by Wiebe

Day 109 & 110 | Life on the island

Day 109 | Friday July 1

After 3 nights it was time to leave Stavanger. I’m on my way to the North Cape and this country is bigger as I expected. From the south to the north is the same distance as from Oslo to Parma. And that’s about the distance I covered in the last 2 months…

My next stop was in Mosterhamn, on the island Bømblo. Anne-Grethe heard about my project through the website of the Norwegian EV association. She lives together in this old and nice house with Leif Kåre, they have been together for 10 years and are in their late 50’s. Anne-Grethe had a hard time as she lost 2 of her children and she believes her best time is yet to come. She dreams of making a trip around the world and especially Australia, I hope we’ll meet there.

The island were they life on is not very big and to cover the most distances they walk. Leif Kåre is an mechanic and make pars for boats, Anne-Grethe works with people who have dementia in a home which is only 5 minutes from their house. To get to the other side of the island they use an electric car and have normal car to get to other cities.

Leif Kåre is a big football fan, in Amsterdam he visited the Ajax stadium and he went to London for the Arsenal one. So of course we watched Belgium – Wales at home and it was one of the first matched this cup I could see fully. After the match they switched on another channel were they had live broadcast of birds sitting on a rock in northern Norway. I was a bit surprised as I never saw a livestream of birds just sitting but apparently this is a phenomenon and actually fun to watch.

Day 110 | Saturday July 2

I had a decent sleep and felt I was recovered from the long walks in Preikenstolen. Today my hosts took me for a sightseeing tour around Bømlo. It is a very idyllic and typical Norwegian island. Many lakes with colored houses on the shores, deep forests and roads with yellow lines. There is something attracting about those yellow lines, I don’t know why.

We visited the old part where many years ago a goldmine was responsible for the biggest income of the island. Almost everyone here has a boat, to fish or just for pleasure. Anne-Grethe and Leif Kåre have a boat too but it needed service. Were they parked the boat they are building a new home which they will use in the summer.

Around 4 I said goodbye to them and started driving towards Bergen, one of the 5 biggest cities in Norway. When I neared the ferry I realized I had forgotten my jacket in Mosterhamn. I couldn’t go without it so had to drive back 45 minutes. I came back with 55% which was just not enough to make it to Bergen so I had to charge the car for a few hours and let my host in Bergen know I would arrive a bit later, which was no problemo.

Around 12.30 I arrived the my hosts in Bergen. To be sure I would find them they hung up balloons on every corner of the street. On the first corner even an Norwegian flag with my name on it. We talked for a little bit and then went to bed. They transformed their storage in the garden into a guest room and this was probably the smallest I slept in but I had the best sleep.

Bomlo

Gasstation for boats

Leif Kåre & Anne-Grethe

Fishing thing

Jesus our savior blabla

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1 July 20161 July 2016 by Wiebe

Day 106 – 108 | In, Around & Above Stavanger

Day 106 | Tuesday June 28

In this nice, warm and free hotel I woke up and breakfast was even included! Still very thankful to Gisli who arranged this for me.

Around 11 I started driving to Sandnes, close to Stavanger. My host Viktoria let me know that she had to work at 14.00 so I had to be there before that. Viktoria is a 20 year old Greek girl. During this trip I stayed a lot at families or people between 30 and 40 years old so it was nice to meet some other aged people. She moved to Norway 2 years ago because of her boyfriend but she grew up in Sweden in her early days. Viktoria works at a hotel and she told her colleagues about me and the project. They wanted to hear more about it so I came with her and shared what I have been doing the last months. They took a picture with me and the car and spread this on their Facebook groups so I might get some invitations from her colleagues in other places throughout the country.

When Viktoria started her shift I went to her house and met her boyfriend Christeas, a 25 year old guy also from Greece who works in the oil industry. The economic situation in Greece is not so good so with the money he earns here he pays for 3 homes in his homecountry.

Viktoria’s hotel offered me dinner so around 6 I went back to get a nice pasta bolognese.

Day 107 | Wednesday June 29

Stavanger seemed to be a beautiful place so today was time for some sightseeing. The city is build around a harbor and it is Norway’s oil capital. Big oil companies have their office here and there is a huge on and off-shore industry. You don’t see a lot of that in the old town but what I believed was pretty cool is a skate park made from old parts of oil platforms.

Boths sides of the old town are very different from each other. The left side has cute little white houses and on the right side it was more of a hipster area with different colored houses.

Day 108 | Thursday June 30

Today was a day were I have been looking forward to for a long time, some years even. I would go to Preikestolen. It is a 600 meters high rock with a beautiful view of the Lysefjords. I saw many pictures of people standing on the very end of the cliff and I wanted to have the same. The translation for Preikestolen is pulpit, which you will understand when you see it. At the top you can watch 600 meters down and if you fall you have a serious headache.

Preikestolen attracts a lot of visitors, especially Japanese Selfiestick Terrorists, and the cliff can be completely filled by them. Because I wanted to have a picture of me standing alone there I decided to go there early, the sun is shines at 4 here so enough hours to shoot the perfect pic.

The alarm went off at 3AM but because I slept only 1 hour I snoozed a few times and got out of bed at 3.45.

At 4.15 I arrived at Lauvvik were the ferry to Oanes goes. Unfortunately I missed it by 3 minutes and had to wait one hour to catch the next one. I think this was meant to be because from when I left it was raining and when I drove off the ferry it stopped. For electric cars most of the ferries in Norway are free, which is one of te reasons this country is heaven. From Oanes it was a 15 minute drive to the carpark. When I arrived there were already people coming back so I was afraid the rock was already full of people.

It was a 3km walk and a climb of about 600 meters. At 6.30 I started walking. On the way up I saw rocks, forests and had views over the fjord, all of them stunning. Also people camped over night close to the edges. Funny thing is that you don’t see the famous rock until you arrive there, which I did exactly at 8. And what a relief: no-one was there! I was the only one on this rock and had been screaming for a few minutes, lovely.

The wind today was very strong and I couldn’t reach the very end of the rock. My goal was to take a picture of myself standing there but I found out that someone has to take that picture then…

I waited about 20 minutes and then 2 Finish girls showed up. They camped here overnight and were also wanting to get the pictures without anyone else on it so we made them of each other. We had to wait until the wind laid down and the sun started shining. At one moment the sun started shining so we had to take our chances, I walk toward the end of the rock and crawled the last meters. We shot all the pics we wanted.

The experience of being at the rock was amazing. The view you have from there is stunning and especially because I have been looking forward to this a long time it was a great relief that I got the shot.

Around 10 I started walking back and many people came from the other way, making me even more happier that I got here in time.
At noon I arrived back in Sandnes and went for a long sleep.

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27 June 201627 June 2016 by Wiebe

Day 105 | The No plan-plan

Day 105 | Monday June 27

One of my problems this journey (and in general) is that I am very sensitive to allergies. Mainly to cats and dust. Nicolai and Stine’s house had both of them. My bed was in a old farmhouse and when I woke up my eyes were burning. I got some medicines for that which make me very tired.

Anyway, I can’t really complain as I am in such a beauty of a country. Here they got space to do anything what they want, really anything! Nicolai is a ski addict and so he build his own ski junp in his garden. And not a tiny one, it’s 25 meters high!

In the morning we drove to Nicolai’s office to have breakfast and we both did work from there. He explained me everything about his job and his passion for sustainability. He has a background as an engineer and his first work was on an off-shore oil rig. Few years ago when you started working in Norway you basically had two options: to work in the oil industry or in the fishing business. When he worked there for a while he started realizing that his industry is very polluting so he decided to study innovation and environment. Now he works as a professor and advisor and has a start-up called Green Currency, a crowdfunding platform for green energy.

My plan for today was not so clear. I had a plugger about 150km but he couldn’t host me today. The plugger after him is based in Stavanger, 400km from Lillesand so that was not an option. To find someone on Couchsurfing was too late either.

I decided to just start driving and stop when I had 20% battery left and make my plan from there, I call it the ‘No plan-plan’. I found out that I had no fear of range anxiety this way. Range anxiety is what you experience when you have little energy left and far away from a charging station. Down the south coast the population is dense so I knew I won’t have any trouble.

Around 9 o’clock I reached 20% and exactly at this moment I passed a town which was quite bigger then any of the places I passed today. I surfed around this place called Moi and finally I found a charging station. It was a normal socket and I could open this with the key I received from elbil.no. Now I got the car covered and started looking for my next needed energy: food.

Right across where I parked the car there were 2 restaurants. I walked in the first one and asked if he spoke English, he didn’t. At the second restaurant, a kebab shop, I had more luck. I told the guy what I was doing and asked if could get some food in return for a mention on the blog. He found it totally cool what I was doing and wanted to help because “this is really something I could do myself and would like it if other people should help me too”. What an awesome guy.

For me it was the first time that I had to ask a stranger for food and I was a bit anxious but it turned out great. He wanted to know all the details from the trip.

The good part was not over yet, he had a friend 3 doors down the store and I could probably sleep on the couch, I had to come back at 11 when he finished work. When I returned he said: “sorry man, my friend is not home tonight but would it be allright if you sleep in a hotel room?” I was a bit stunned and just wanted to check if he understood that I was traveling without money. “Yeah of course no problem I have a friend who works there and they would be happy to help you!”. From now on I won’t use CouchSurfing anymore and just go for the No plan-plan which is way more adventure, exciting and interesting.

We drove to the hotel which was located on a hill with a nice view over the fjords. I put the charging cable through the window of the room and got free wifi so I can even bring you this blog in time!

Today was pretty amazing, so cool that people you don’t know just want to help you out because they appreciate what you are doing. Gives me more power to cross the countries where not many people offered energy!

Nicolai's Ski Jump

Dare to jump?

Lillesand

The kebab store in Moi

My delicious free dinner

This is the regular charging station

Chargespot

Gisli the nice kebak baker

View from the hotel on Moi

My room, charging through the window

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27 June 201627 June 2016 by Wiebe

Day 104 | Gone fishing

Day 104 | Sunday June 26

For a Sunday I woke up fairly early and I met the other parts of the family who were already asleep when I arrived last night. Saskia’s husband, son and daughter. We had a nice Dutch breakfast and had a chat about what they are all doing here.

Saskia wanted to show me around town and because her daughter is getting her drivers license she drove our ‘tourbus’ through Skien. It is a nice town in Southern Norway. We did a quick stop at a lock (not the one were you put a key in but the thing to move boats to higher parts) which was apparently the only one in Norway.

With Saskia I went to a open air museum were some 400 year old houses still were standing strong. It was interesting to see how they were being build. They start with stacking wooden poles on each other. People with less money leave it like that and the ones with a bit more to spend cover it with wooden panels so it looks a bit better decorated, they even carve wooden ornaments on it.

My next stop was in Lillesand, 150km from Skien. Nicolai invited me over and he was one of the first in Scandinavia to plug me in on the website. I met him at his office in Lillesand. It’s a cute little town with almost only white houses. Nicolai has a lot of knowledge about renewable energy and gives advice about this to companies.

Nicolai didn’t had food in house yet so in stead of going to the supermarkt to buy it we took the boat and went fishing! It was quite a unique boat ride. The shores and cliffs are so beautiful here. He threw the fishing line in the water and I would drive the boat. Already after a few minutes we caught a mackerel. His 2 year old daughter was also with us and even though we didn’t understand each other it was fun to play around with her. Making weird faces and putting out a tongue seems to be a universal language.

After an hour or so we return back home. He lives here with his wife Christine and 3 daughters since 2 years in this old farm. I had an whole stable for myself to sleep in this night. Christine works as a psychologist for companies.

So far I really enjoy Norway. The people are very welcoming and what I have seen of the country so far is beautiful. And from what I’ve heard it’s only getting better when I go up north.

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26 June 201626 June 2016 by Wiebe

Day 103 | Leaving Oslo

Day 103 | Saturday June 25

Since a few weeks I had been in touch with Jeroen, a Dutchman living here in Norway, close to Lillehammer. He introduced me to the Norwegian EV association and gave me some more tips. Last week he asked me if I’m stopping by at his place but unfortunately I has to answer no as his lives out of the route. I invited him to go together to the presentation of the SP:01 for the general public, which was today. He was very enthusiastic about this so around 11 we met there.
Jeroen is a musician and plays the guitar. Together with a friend in Lofoten who is an photograph they made a DVD, Jeroen composing the music for the pictures his friend shot. He gave me a copy and you might hear is music one of my videos soon.
At the presentation there were also some electric motorbikes and Jeroen as an motorlover he took the opportunity to test one. When he got back after a few minutes his hair already unfolded he enjoyed it.

https://www.facebook.com/PlugMeIn/photos/a.357717747770627.1073741829.211949022347501/504078846467849/?type=3&theater

At the presentation I met 2 people who also had a plan to make a roadtrip with an electric car. They have this project called Toughtleader Global and want to travel all around Europe in 1 month to visit eco resorts. I thought they were here to present their plans and find some contacts but I was surprised to find out they already are starting this Wednesday! And they don’t have a car yet! Pretty amazing.
So they are doing videos along the way and wanted to interview me. I believe it will be aired in South African TV in a few months.

I rushed back to Oyvind’s place to get my stuff as I had to go to the next plugger. I thanked them for their hospitality and kindness, I stayed at their place 4 nights so I was very thankful.

My next hosts live in Skien but they were BBQ’ing in another place. I put the address in my navigation and when I was there I send them a text. When I told them where I was they didn’t know this place and asked me to put another adress in the GPS. We found out I was 65km away from them… Damn! I didn’t have enough power so it was necessary to stop in a tiny place.
Fortunately charging stations are everywhere here and with the key and RFID chips I received from elbil.no, Vortum and Grønn I can charge nearly at every station.

The last days I had the feeling I loose range more easily and bumps felt less hard so I had the feeling the pressure of the tires was not right. I stopped at a gasstation to check it and actually this was the first time I had to do this myself. I didn’t completely understand how the thing works and was afraid to blow up the tires. In the gasstation were 3 guys sitting so I asked them if they could help. One of the guys drove an EV too and really liked my project. They explained me what to do, listened to my story and continued their way. A few minutes later they came back and offered me a huge pack of drinks. Pretty awesome guys!

Around 23.30 I arrived in Skien at Saskia’s place, a Dutchie. She lives here with her husband and child but they were already asleep. We had a short chat and because she waited for me a long time she was pretty tired so we plugged in the car and went to bed.

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