I enjoyed 2 very relaxing days at the B&B. Marnix and Joyce took good care of me and I felt very welcome.
Today I needed to travel 260km and I had the feeling that it would be a long day. I left in the morning and was planning to recharge in Karlstad at the Ikea, again. Here in Sweden I always choose for this place as they have good chargingstations and free WiFi. It was rainy today and Karlstad became out of reach. I did a pitstop in Kristinehamn where they had 2 chargingstations. It was not a regular one where you could just plug in and charge but it had a manual. From this I understood that you had to send an SMS with the text ‘charge’. An hatch would automatically open and I attached the cable with the car, nothing happened. As I didn’t know what to do I asked an passerby if he could help me translate the instructions. Apparently you had to close the hatch first but that also wouldn’t start charging. There was an info number and the nice man would translate it for me. A robot told because it was weekend we had to call an different number. A nice lady on the other side of the line would tell the mechanic to get in touch with me and 2 minutes later I had him on the phone. He was on his way to the office and from there he could look into the system what was wrong. While waiting for his phone calls I tried sending a couple of texts to the number and it started charging. After a while it stopped and was hoping it would be enough to reach Karlstad.
With 6% left on the display I would reach the Ikea in Karlstad but sadly enough this time there was only a Type 2 charging station. For every EV driver this is perfect but I was a but sad as they normally don’t communicate with my car, so was the case this time. I looked around for other plugs but there was none around. I was getting a bit desperate as the next charging station was 10km away and couldn’t reach that. I stopped at the closest house I could find and asked the people if I could use their plug for 20 mins so I could reach the next stop.
That was no problem at all and they were a bit surprised that I was driving all the way to Australia and doing that without money (duh, who would do such a thing anyway?). So they even invited me to have a bbq with them. So awesome that these nice Swedes shared their energy with me, not just food but also their stories. Oh yeah and also Swedish chewing tobacco, which was also an… interesting experience.
They told me that there is a Swedish saying “the sun always shines in Karlstad” which seemed to be very true, especially in a social way. If you want to know the scientifically explanation: because Karlstad is located next to a lake the wind blows the clouds aways which makes room for the sunlight.
Around 9 it was time to go to the station as I still needed to charge quickly and reach Tossë were Madde was waiting for me. I already let her know that I would arrive fairly late and that was no problem.
Around 1.15 I left the highway and the navigation send me into the forrest. I was not really sure if I was right here, there were no houses at all. After 5km the navigation told me I arrived and I stood next to a house but there were no lights, I texted Madde and she told me I had to continue driving. It was dark and a few miles away I could see a small light coming towards me, spooky stuff. It appeared to be Madde who came in my direction. We drove to here house, still had no idea how it looked like, we had some tea and round 2.30 I went to bed.
