My last day starts aboard the train from Vienna to Feldkirch, enjoying the luxury of my own hotel-style sleeper compartment.
I particularly enjoyed having a shower while the train was moving. It still feels slightly odd to be standing under a shower while travelling through Austria.
At around 7 am there is a knock on my door and breakfast arrives, based on the order I placed yesterday evening. The Semmel are still warm and the water for my tea is properly hot. This is a rather civilised way to travel, and the ÖBB sleeper cars really do make it possible to arrive somewhere having actually slept.
I enjoy breakfast with a view of the Vorarlberg Alps, while pondering where I might take the TWIKE next.
After breakfast, I continue writing another entry for this blog, helped by the fantastic views from my very comfortable bed-seat arrangement.
We arrive in Feldkirch on time, and I can see that the TWIKE has made it too. Good start to the last part of the journey. 😉
The carriages are uncoupled and shunted to another part of the station, where we will be able to collect the vehicles.
This is what the final part of the shunting looked like.
The ÖBB crew are quick to get to work and release my TWIKE as the first vehicle. Only about 130 km left until I am back home.
Before crossing the border, I decide to buy one more round of energy drinks. A Red Bull in a glass bottle is rather unusual nowadays, although it is very much how I remember it from the early days.
I remember being young in the early 1990s and going to Austria with friends specifically to get this strange new drink. Red Bull had launched in Austria in 1987, but it did not arrive officially in Switzerland until 1994 because of the Swiss regulatory requirements around its ingredients. So we young were bringing it back across the border to be resold at a premium.
I also remember the distinctive 250 ml can appearing as the standard format around the time it was released in Switzerland. At the time it looked rather unusual, which was probably fitting for a drink that seemed to belong to an entirely new drinks category.
Anyway, back to my journey home. Within ten minutes of buying my drink, I am at the Swiss border.
And with that, I am back among the Swiss Alps and, generally speaking, on very well maintained roads. After the surfaces I have encountered in parts of Eastern Europe, I notice this more than I probably would on an ordinary trip.
About 20 metres after the border, I take the first road on the right, which leads onto the A13 towards St. Margrethen before joining the A1 towards Winterthur.
From here I give the TWIKE the beans and let the full 8 kW of peak power do its work, taking me all the way to its maximum speed.
And this is what that means in actual numbers. Obviously the consumption goes up quite a bit at this speed, by about 70% in fact. Physics remains disappointingly reliable.
The temperature climbs again, and I feel like stopping for another drink before getting home. This really is the final instalment of my search for local energy drinks.
I arrive home at around 11 am, happy, tired and quite ready to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, the office is waiting for me again tomorrow morning.
And with that, THUB2026, this year’s trans-European TWIKE adventure, is over.
So what are the final THUB2026 numbers?
11 days, 3,162 km, 129 kWh, 10 countries.
40.7 Wh/km on average. Given that I spent two days at motorway speeds, I am quite happy with that.
Average distance per day: 287 km. I genuinely enjoyed most of those kilometres.
I unload the TWIKE, park it in its usual place and plug it in. Let’s see whether it actually charges properly.
Then it is time to show my family some of my haul.
And a few things from Ukraine, too.
And then there is the souvenir I could have done without. Like my trip to Portugal, which also featured some genuinely terrible road surfaces and literally destroyed my Laptop, this trip was not particularly kind to my electronics either. The constant shaking worked loose screws not only on the outside, but also inside the laptop. Here you can see the battery and motherboard basically floating freely inside the case.
For the last time, let’s have a look at today’s stats.
THUB2026 was a great trip. It was also a very hot one, and I probably pushed the limits a little harder than necessary.
My next trip will have a little more slack built into it, and hopefully a bit more time to stop, look around and simply enjoy being somewhere nice.
I already have a few ideas. Thank you for reading along and for being part of the trip.