Dutch Embassy

 by Wiebe

Day 174 & 175 | Vilnius Pt. II

Day 174 | Sunday September 5

My host Bernie has a lot of contacts throughout the city and today he arranged something special. A Dutch friend of him is about to open a ski-center in Vilnius, Slidinėjimo Akademija. Not one with snow or brushes but a rotating track. It’s about a 15 meters long and the height can be adjusted. It’s been a while since I skied for the last time, at least 18 years, so it was nice to do it again. It was a cool experience, I expected the track to be a bit stiff but it was actually pretty easy to make turns. The ‘cool’ thing is that you can do it with your t-shirt on as it’s of course not cold at all. For Bernie it was the first time but he got the hang of it pretty quickly.

In the evening I met Johan, another friend of Bernie. Johan made a road trip per bike from Lithuania to Malaysia, so from here I’m making the same route as he did and wanted to meet up with him to hear his experiences about especially the middle-east. I got a lot wiser, felt relieved about some issues I was thinking about and had some new things to think about.

Johan is a traveler pur sang himself. He had a baby a few years ago and couldn’t resist to travel again. He bought an old fireman truck from Austria and with his girlfriend and baby they traveled around the world. Great inspiration for later. You can find his stories and pictures here.

Lithuanians are very proud of their language. This is because they have been under pressure for a long time and due to circumstances over the years the country changed a lot. The language is something that never changes. Bernie and Renata told me that there even is a law that says you always need to stick to the language. They received an email from the government who saw the menu of one of their restaurants online. For a dish they used different words than the original Lithuanian language and now they risk a fine if they don’t change it!

Day 175 | Monday September 6

The day started with a meeting at the Dutch embassy in Vilnius. Via Facebook I was in touch with Bert, the ambassador, for already some days. He even offered me a place to stay at his house, a really nice gesture. He told me more about sustainability in Lithuania. How the country bought a boat to get their own gas so they can be independent from Russia and how the Dutch are helping with giving advice about our biking infrastructure. 

For lunch I had a meeting with Zilvinas, journalist from 15 Mins, one of the countries biggest media channels. He took me for lunch and asked me everything about my trip. You can read the article here, it’s in Lithuanian of course but definitely worth putting through Google Translate.

Than I picked up Johan and drove to Mindaugas. This guy converted his own Honda HR to fully electric already in 2008. I made a video about it (which is very technical but interesting) which you can see here:

Full Electric Honda HR-VFull Electric Honda HR-V

Pictures 

At the embassy
The electric Honda
Indoor Skiing
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 by Wiebe

Day 148 – 151| Green innovation in Helsinki

Day 148| Tuesday August 9

I was invited by the Dutch embassy in Helsinki. In every country I contact them to let them know I am here and ask them if they can help me with finding initiatives who are active on sustainability. Embassies are always involved in the business sector and have many contacts there. I was welcomed by Ilona and Ozlem, who is the replacement for the ambassador. They took me for lunch, I could charge the car in the basement and they even collected some money among all the employees for my visa to Russia! That was seriously really nice of them and now I got enough to get it on Friday.

Wednesday & Thursday

After a while it was finally time to visit sustainable initiatives. Helsinki has a big start-up community and many initiatives who are active on sustainability, interesting stuff for me. I spend both days to visit some, here you can find a short review and I will add the interviews and extended reviews soon.

Tuup

An innovative app which changes the way how we use mobility. With Tuup you can plan your trip from A to B and Tuup tells you the most efficient way to travel. This includes every kind of mobility like trains, trams, busses and also car sharing. With the app it’s possible to pay for all the different kinds of transport you use. It also tells you how many emissions the trip has and has the possibility to select the transport systems which has the lowest amount of emissions.

Blindsquare

Another app but of totally different use. It’s one that makes the life of blind and visually impaired people easier using open data and augmented reality. Blindsquare describes the environment, announces points of interest and street intersections as you travel. The app can tell blind people where they are, which hotspots are near them, which bus is approaching and it can even tell if there is an electric car close. A very valuable option as it’s hard for blind people to hear electric cars approaching.

ECO Viiki

Viikki is a leading area of ecological building in Finland. Many of the ecological building projects in the area have also been recognized internationally. Situated in the southern part of Latokartano, Eco-Viikki is the first ecologically designed neighborhood in Finland.

The idea behind the neighborhood’s design has been a sustainable, healthy and amendable living environment, where practical solutions save energy and reduce the amount of waste generated. Construction of the 23-hectare residential area Eco-Viikki lasted from 1999 to 2004.

The active and passive utilization of solar energy has been one of the main themes of ecological experimental building in Viikki. Nine properties with 412 homes are part of the area’s solar energy heating system. The first, and only, apartment building to utilize solar electricity in Finland is also located in Eco-Viikki.

RePack

A very simple idea, with an possible huge impact. RePack has set up a reusable packaging system. Companies can send their good in these neatly designed packages, the costumer takes out the goods, delivers the empty package to the mailbox and receives an discount coupon which they can use at any shop which is connected to the RePack brand.

I stayed 3 nights at Maria & Trine. They were very nice, gave me the key so I could come and leave whenever I want, made food for me and shared some interesting stories. Normally I stay at the same place only 1 night, which is a rush sometimes. If I stay somewhere a bit longer it makes the conversations better and I can relax more.

Thursday night I went back to Seppo and the fam where I stayed last weekend, they asked me to return because they wanted to help with the final preparations for Russia. I had the idea to make a document with translations for Russia. Luckily Seppo’s brother is an official English – Russian translator and was able to translate it for me. Now I have a good document which I can show to Russian people to ask them for help. I have now some offers in St. Petersburg and Moscow but between there still nothing, and that’s an 700km drive so those translations will be used 🙂

Seppo’s oldest son was now also at home. He is also a traveler and has recently been in India. As I’m also going there he gave me some tips and contacts.

Day 151 | Friday August 12

Seppo and his Russian wife gave me a lot of stuff for my trip. A bag full of food and even some travel money. They already gave me some Rubles last week so they have been very nice to me and I really appreciate all their efforts.

At 10 o’clock I could pick up my visa in the city of Helsinki so I wanted to be there right on time as it’s going to be a long long day. I was there at 10 sharp and the visa has been granted to me! I was still not sure if I would receive it as they believed my insurance policy was not right.

My end destination for today is Vyborg, a few kilometers over the Russian border and 250km from Helsinki. So I needed to charge in between. In Loviisa Raimo offered me to charge the car and I contacted him a few days ago to ask if it was ok to do a pitstop there. When I arrived there was a group of 3 journalists waiting for me to hear my story, I will post some links when the articles are online.

When Im writing this blog its 16.00 hours and the remaining of the day you can watch tomorrow in a vlog! How do you like that?

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 by Wiebe

Day 99 | The longest day of the year

Day 99 | Tuesday June 21

I said goodbye to Øyvin but knew that I would see him again in a few days. Today was the longest day of the year and I had 3 appointments.
First at the Dutch Embassy in Oslo. I was welcomed by Taco who took about 100 pictures of the car and took me for lunch. He explained what the Embassy in Oslo doing. They help Dutch people sorting out papers to get into the country, facilitate Dutch companies who want to do business here, share knowledge with to Norwegian government and they also have a military department here. The Dutch army takes part in training camps and if the Russians attack Norway Holland has also a role in defending the country.
Just last week a delegation of Dutch EV companies visited Norway. Taco send a mail to all the Norwegian companies if they could help me with the documentary. I always liked Taco’s.

While driving to Oslo I saw so many electric cars, unbelievable. It was like there was an EV parade organized. At the moment 1 out of every 3 cars sold is an electric one and there are around 100.000 in the country, on a population of 5 million. That’s huge/

Second stop was at Nolbil, the Norwegian E-Mobility association. They provided me with a key so I can open all the 220v charging stations and an RFID tag for the newer charging station. Great that they can help me with this!

Last stop was at Meshcrafts, a company that created the app ‘SmartCharge’ owned by Paal and Asmund. It’s an EV App where you can find private charging stations. For an driver this is ideal because you have more stations available and for the owner it’s good because he can earn some money with selling out electricity.

Paal found me a few months ago and plugged me in. With the 3 of us we went for dinner and as EV professionals of course they wanted to know all the detailer about the trip. Later Paal would take me to a concert, Over Oslo. It was on top of a hill with a beautiful overview on the city. Paal introduced me to his wife, her sister and brother-in-law. I had my camera with me and it was not allowed to take it in, the guard allowed it but said that if they would see me taking pictures they would take my camera. As I really wanted to document this I tried to get a press pass and with some heavy smiling and lots of talks they eventually gave me one. So now you can watch some nice pictures of the show.
Highlight of the evening was the performance of Tom Jones! This guy is 76 years and still the bomb!

Paal’s house was not ready to receive me so he booked me a hotel room in downtown Oslo. This hotel was actually sustainable as well. The people who work there are homelessness or have some social problems. In the hotel they are trained and once they are fit for the job they have to leave as they are ready for a normal job.

Parking between 5 other electric cars
The Dutch Embassy
Charging station
Over Oslo Concert
Paal & Cecilie
Tom!!
Still the bomb
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