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.