What I like about driving an extremely rare vehicle is the close-knit community it creates. Since there isn’t a wide network of commercially motivated help available, it’s important to know other drivers one can reach out to in case of questions or problems…or just to share good memories! The TWIKEklub traditionally organizes 4 events during winter (which has, thanks to global warming, been bringing us less snow every year for the past 10 years). Cold weather is ideal for traditional Swiss cheese-based dishes such as Fondue and Raclette. JC and I take part at most of the events – last […]
TDAF2016: A new TWIKE adventure
JC and I have started planning our newest TWIKE adventure. It will be a relaxed 9-10 day trip in June 2016 – taking us up to the highest points in Europe and back down to the sea. Can you guess where we’re heading? More to follow soon.
A quick visit to Vienna – TW560 travels to Vienna on its own!
Finally, I get to go to Vienna again! With my new job I’m travelling considerably less than before and have no direct responsibility for Austria anymore. An upcoming series of official functions in Vienna, however, have me fully booked for 2 days and I thought to myself hmm… how about extending the trip to visit some friends and stay with my family and work out of the Vienna office? Everyone I got in touch with was very exited at the prospect and my agenda for my week in Vienna filled up in no time. My company has a global policy […]
ODT: Vorarlberg & Lake Constance
Contrary to my prediction in my last post, we’ve been having extremely nice weather late into the year – a week-end of sun and acceptable temperatures for driving without the canopy was coming up. Claudia, a close friend and long-time reader of my blog, had asked me to join me on a trip for some time now: 1+1= another awesome one-day-trip with TW560. Since there are many places we could head to, I asked Claudia if she had any preference: Appenzell and the upper Rhine valley. (Good choice!) We agreed to meet early morning in Winterthur. This left me with […]
Day 3/3: Switzerland. Just. Perfect.
Welcome back to the last day of a 3-day EV-tour across 6 passes and 3 countries. In the last entry we made it to the duty-free haven of Livigno. The elderly hotel owner who had gladly let us charge over night had called some of her family over to see us off personally. Livigno is located in a high-lying valley with one road leading to Italy and two to Switzerland. After checking road conditions we decided against the Bernina pass and (much narrower and notoriously closed at a minutes’ notice) Forcola di Livigno road and head towards the Passo di […]
Day2/3: 15°, 0°, 22°, -2° & No.4, Take II
Welcome back! After driving to the highest point in Europe yesterday, our trip today will take us above 2200m three times, one of the passes will be the famous Passo di Stelvio at 2758m, just a few meters below Europe’s highest point reachable by road…All this using electric energy only 🙂 This entry will be longer than usual – many very nice experiences to write about. It rained all night. Sleeping right beneath a skylight helped me be acutely aware of this. Whilst lying awake, I visualize a brilliant day without rain and us having a very nice day. The […]
Day1 – Our Objective: Drive to the highest point in Europe
I start early at 6am – Saturday mornings are usually not a problem traffic-wise, except for Saturdays when school vacations start (this Saturday…) – as I wrote in my last post, preparations for this trip were changed at a very late stage and I’m just compensating for traffic by leaving slightly earlier than initially planned. The best way to make some distance – because I’ve literally driven every single possible road to Austria and want to get to somewhere I don’t know yet quickly – is to drive on the motorway. An interesting trade-off is when you want to get […]
3-Day Tour: To the highest Point in Europe
A new multiple-day TWIKE-adventure – A new TWIKE team – A new goal to reach! After visiting the three northern-most points of the Mediterranean and crossing Europe’s fourth-highest pass by TWIKE last year, I wondered: where is the highest point in Europe i could drive to without needing a 4×4 or special permits? Thanks to Wikipedia, getting the answer is not very difficult 🙂 June this year I added a new TWIKE adventure to my “upcoming activities” widget: Drive to the highest point in Europe reachable by an official, tarmacked road without special permits. Theoretically, reaching this point and getting […]
One-Day-Trip: Swiss Jura
One-day trips are one of the nicest forms of TWIKE travel. After our last trip together, visiting the Italian part of Switzerland – Nico and i had always been wanting to take TW560 on another spin somewhere nice, together. As always, life goes by really quickly and Nico’s high-powered career with lots of international travel and myself being also quite busy didn’t help either. Finally, In January 2015 we fixed a date for our second adventure after a 3 year break… in July 2015! Already with some ev-travel experience himself, I asked Nico in which general direction he wanted to […]
TWIKEing in Spain
This is a quick re-cap of my two weeks in Spain this year. Since I’m on vacation I’ll be brief. As you might know, part of my extended family is from Spain. Owning and not renting means we get treated to local stuff as apartment owner’s meetings and energy bills 🙂 I’ve already written about Spain’s exemplary power bills and wished for us in Switzerland to have the same level of detail. This year, I’m treated to the newest numbers and they’ve just gotten better! Over 40% of all energy in Spain is from renewable sources! It’s always interesting to […]