Another night with aircon – another night well slept. I get up bright and early (one of the perks of getting older) and get my TWIKE ready for today’s drive. The sun filters though the trees at Bela Crkva’s main square in a very nice and warm shade of yellow that promises a very, very hot day. Temperatures at 6.15 am were already 21°C. As I mentioned in the last post, Bela Crkva is the last Serbian settlement before the border crossing just 5 km down the road. The views were already stunning and Romania’s hills were already beckoning in […]
THUB2026 – Day 2 – Slavonski Brod to Bela Crkva
Good morning to all! Today will be a day where TW560 will unlock some serious new-country XP, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia – potentially even Romania.. let’s see how today goes. We start today with TW560 fully charged, cool temperatures and a beautiful day just starting at 6am. The road I’ve chosen for today stays on Croatian territory for around 30km before crossing the Sava river into Bosnia and Herzegovina. I’ve chosen to cross there and not closer to Slavonski Brod as it is a larger crossing and I’m hoping to not have to wait too long in line […]
THUB2026 – Day 1 – Graz to Slavonski Brod
I must have been very tired yesterday – I barely remember my head touching the pillow … to wake to my alarm going off at 7.15 am. Another sunny and potentially very hot day beckons. At 7.30 precisely, i hear a knock on my door. In comes the conductor and sets up the table with a few very precise motions and hands me my breakfast. The bread rolls are super-fresh and the tea water is piping hot. This makes for a very nice breakfast which I eat whilst looking out of the window. We’re already one hour late. This isn’t […]
THUB2026 – Prologue
One last day at work, filled with last minute requests. TW560 is charging at a super-low rate to the very, very rare SOC of 100%. (It never does more than a dozen full-charges a year) Thanks to all the work and being very busy, it’s 5pm in a blink of an eye – time to get ready to leave! Packing my TWIKE is a 2-minute affair with all my previous experience! Everything is ready. Ten days on the road, just me and the TWIKE, lie ahead. I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time. With this, […]
THUB2026 – 1 day to go
Just a few hours left before THUB2026 starts. I’ve been busy ensuring that all the last tasks to ensure a successful trip: As last time before TDGB2025 last year, I chose the cable sets I’ll be taking with me. Again, the set is getting smaller and smaller every year as there is less and less ‘creative charging’ going on. Then, I took TW560 to my favourite TWIKE mechanic, Andi from ksenotek for some pre-trip TLC. TW560 got a new dash cam after my trusty dash cam mirror combo failed after many years. The new one is small, has WiFi and […]
THUB2026: How to insure when driving though an active war zone
First, some good news: Time has a very peculiar property: the closer the date for a TWIKE adventure gets, the quicker the time seems to pass! This entry is dedicated to my struggles to find suitable – any – insurance for the few days and 100s of kilometres I’ll be driving through Ukraine when sticking to this year’s goal of ‘tracing Hungary’s border’. Just to make sure everyone reading this blog understands this correctly: I’m not seeking any risks, I don’t want to be anywhere near any active war zones. This region is Ukraine’s safest and the places I am […]
THUB2026: 45 Days to go!
For the last few weeks I’ve been working continuously on refining the route for my trip as the days until my departure are melting away rapidly! Specifically, since I’ve decided to concentrate on the Carpathian Mountain range, I’ve researched the roads in Romania and, boy, are there some nice ones to choose from! The featured post image above is from Romania’s famous mountain road Transfăgărășan – a stretch of road winding its way across the southern ridge of the Carpathians. It just opened mid-June and according to this article, drivers are advised about the frequent presence of bears along the […]
Finally fully electric again, Part II
Welcome back! After the last entry looking at our first ever electric car we owned as a family in 2008, today we’re going to look at our new car we bought early March 2026: The reason we’ve had to have an internal combustion engine car in the past was us owning a horse and two of our daughters wanting to participate in show jumping competitions. This required us being able to tow a trailer with at least one horse, typically two, to the various competitions around Switzerland. The only electric car that would be able to do this is the […]
Finally Fully Electric again – Part 1
tl;dr – we are ‘fully’ electric again as a family. Rather than just show the new car and explain our choice, I thought it would be interesting to look back at our first experience with full electric mobility, 17 years ago. Back then, driving my TWIKE already made me a bit of an eccentric treehugger in the eyes of others. Then our Volvo S80 suffered a catastrophic gearbox failure, and we needed a replacement. I decided it was a good moment to go electric. The market at that time offered very little. Most electric cars were either ICE conversions by […]
Update on THUB2026
A short update on my preparations for this year’s pan-European trip, where I’ll be tracing Hungary’s borders. First on the checklist was making sure my vehicle insurance is recognised in, and actually covers, Ukraine. This small stretch of the journey is by far the most interesting from a planning perspective. The good news: my liability insurance explicitly includes Ukraine (UA). That removes one major possible roadblock. Next step: ensuring transport. I had to move quickly to grab one of the last available slots on the car trains. Having used these routes many times before, I decided once again to splurge […]