To not distract from the subject I wanted the previous blog to be completely about Auschwitz, so now I pick it up from there.
Day 186 | Friday September 16
I drove back to Krakow where I had a hostel who wanted to take care of me, the Pink Panther’s hostel. A party hostel and when I entered they had a summer-holiday-party-theme going on. I was up for some drinks but still needed to find a place to charge the car, which was difficult I experienced the day before yesterday. I spend a while driving from location to location but they either were not working with my car or already closes, most of them are placed in shopping malls. I knew that there was one mall with a 32A plug so I thought to go there the next morning, charge a few hours and continue. I parked the car close to the hostel and joined in for some drinks.
Day 187 | Saturday September 17
If there goes something wrong on this trip it usually happens in a chain of events, so was this time the case unfortunately. When I got to the car I found it had a wheel clamp, damn! I couldn’t figure out why because I parked between the lines. All the other 5 cars next to me had a clamp too. Apparently there where some temporary signs and it was not allowed to park here. I got pretty nervous because I was expecting a fine of a couple of hundred euros but it was only 100 Zloty, which is ‘only’ like 24 euro. Even better news was that I still had some Zloty’s left from Wouter and Ania so no troubles.
Than I needed to find a place to charge. The shopping mall was fully occupied and the other charging stations in the middle of the city too. I was hoping to find a place in the city and do some sightseeing. In stead I found a shopping mall outside the town and charged there on normal speed. This changed my plans as I couldn’t leave today. I send a message to Magdalena where I stayed in Warsaw. Later that night she replied that she founded a friend who could help me. I could sleep there and charge the car at the university across the street.
Day 188 | Sunday September 18
My goal for today was to reach Rseszow, about 18km from Krakau. It was raining, there was heavy wind and I lost range fast. About 20km from I realized I was not going to make it and needed a pit-stop to recharge. Problem was a pitstop (fuel station, house or anything with a plug) didn’t appear and I had 4% left. I started dring on the emergency lane with 10km/h to safe energy but after 5km my battery was 0%, damn! It had to happen at least one time this trip so that I did only after 6 months is not a bad achievement I reckon.
The car stopped on bend of an exit to a smaller road but passing cars only noted me when they drove by so none of them stopped to see what was going on. There was no emergency lane too so it was even a dangerous situation. I called my insurance in Holland and they would send a Polish roadside assistance. Just when I hung up a nice man stopped and offered to tow me to the city.
When towing the car started to recharge itself, because of the spinning of the wheels it regenerates electricity, and that goes pretty fast actually. When we got to the city after 15 minutes I already had 25%. I thanked the good man for his kindness and drove to a charger. Before leaving Krakau I did some research and there were 3 chargers here, unfortunately the first one I couldn’t find and the second one was closed on Sunday. The third one was available but the slowest option. Again it was located in the garage of a shopping mall and I decided to spend the night in the car as I couldn’t find a place to stay.
Day 189 | Monday September 19
Hungry, sleepy and Grumpy I woke up in the car around 7am. I realized that the last time I had a decent meal was last Thursday at Ania’s place. The previous day I only had eaten some noodles. Today I wanted to reach Lviv in Ukraine. Early morning I crossed the border, on both the Polish and Ukrainian side they were very cautious. The Polish customs went through the car with dogs 3 times and the complete process took one hour. Luckily for Ukraine I didn’t need a visa.
My hosts in Lviv were Nazar and Lena. I met them at the presentation of the Detroit Electric SP-O1 in Oslo. They are installing a charging network in the country and also sell electric cars, more about this in a later blog. Unfortunately they were away from Lviv to install chargers somewhere in the mountains so they put me in a hotel. As I was super tired I slept some hours and woke up around 9pm. Than I was super hungry and made some rice in the bathroom of the hotelroom.
Pictures
