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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!