Day 83 & 84

Day 83- Sunday June 5

Sunday was a national holiday in Denmark. In Roskilde I had breakfast with Mads, drove a bit on his e-bike and then went to Copenhagen. I met with Valerie, I knew her from back home and she just moved here this week. After her study Hotel Management she went traveling for a few months, came back and wanted to do something else. She ended up working here as sales manager for an international company.

Last week I contacted Anders who offered me a place to stay here in Copenhagen. He quickly replied that he was not home this day but a friend of him, Jesper would welcome me and make dinner. Great deal.
Jesper and Anders are close friends and know each other from when they lived in Russia. They are both obsessed with the Baltic states and they have a blog about that. Recently they traveled through those countries with… an electric car! They did it with my smaller brother, the VW E-UP. Jesper showed me a lot of pictures and it was really interesting to see their adventure, especially because I expect that those countries will be the harder part of my trip.

As it was a national holiday there where no shops open and Jesper forgot a bit about that so he got use some pizza’s. Us is Jesper, Ayda and me. Ayda is Ander’s roommate and is a architect from Lithuania.

Day 84 – Monday June 6

Today was a workday. Whenever I have to chance I always try to work. As I had an apartment for myself (Ayda went to work, Jesper left) I took the opportunity to do as much as I can. I’m going into a new country soon so that requires some planning. I do research about sustainable initiatives in a country, send every of them a personal request, need to learn about the traffic regulations, contact people where I can stay, make a press list with Meltwater etc etc.

The only appointment today was with Bjarne Schlager. He is a Danish architect and developed the Touche Streetlight. It’s a streetlight powered by the sun and it works off-grid. During the day a battery in the bottom of the streetlight collects energy to use it at night to give light. Also a WiFi device is installed so people can use internet and the developer can see the status of the light.
The lights can be found in many European countries and also in the Middle-East. Later you can find a complete recap about the meeting on this website.

At around 11pm Anders returned home from his trip to the Ukraine. He is a very enthusiastic guy and very interested in my project and especially about the car. I showed Anders how the car was made and shared some tech specs.