Switzerland – Solar energy, Zurich, Chur

28. Mai 2013

We are on the way… yeah! :)

We stayed at Julias friend till monday. He had to work on monday again, and we left with him in the morning at 9. The first point of interest was the next Media Markt. We got told that the prices in Switzerland are good for electronic stuff. Well…

We decided to buy some external memory and Julia needed a new camera. At least we wanted to check what they have.
First of all we had to wait half an hour, because they open first at 10 am.

And then we checked out the external hard disks. They had a lot… hard to decide which one to buy… but finally we found both each an 1TB hard disk. We need to store our pictures, videos and other stuff on it.
The same with cameras. Julia asked the stuff for their advice… checked this one and this one. In the mean time I got the idea to buy a cheap camera as pocket camera. For the pictures between, when I don’t want to take out the big DSLR.

After one hour we left the Media Markt… and a lot of money left us. :( After that expensive stop we was driving further to Bubikon. There is the company Sistech. The company is specialist for solar panels. Especially for people like us… traveler. So, not the big ones on the roof, the smaller ones for backpacker and outdoor friends.
Julia had earlier already contact to the company. It’s a small but very nice company. Familiar somehow.

I was thinking already a long time about buying such a solar system. When I go to the next camping trip somewhere in the middle of nowhere, then I can charge my camera and netbook and all other batteries just with solar energy.

We asked the poor manager thousands of questions, the get information about the products and which would be the best for me. Also Julia didn’t know most of the products, because they changed a lot after her last sale.

There are a lot of provider for solar systems, with a lot of offers. But this supplier was always my favorite one. They have the most powerful panels and the best batteries to cache the electricity. I checked a lot of other companies. But when you check clother… the exact information about the panels/cells and batteries, then is quick clear that they are maybe powerful enough to charge a mobile.. but that’s it. Not even close to what they promise.

I’ve bought finally a foldable solar panel with 46 Watt (max. power) and a power tank with 88.000 Wh. With this combination I can charge all my batteries… netbook, cameras, mobile, rechargeable batteries, etc. I will try it on our journey and later under the sun of Cyprus :)We had later a long chat with Hugo (the manager). And suddenly it was 6pm. already. Actually we wanted to visit Zurich on this day as well. We could forget about it. … So we changed our plans and decided to visit Zurich on Tuesday.After we said Good Bye to Hugo and the other people, we went to watch out for a nice place to sleep. We’ve got the tip that a Hotel, which is close, isn’t open yet, and we could maybe sleep there on the parking place.

We arrived, thanks to our navigation system, before the darkness. The hotel was closed, but the restaurant was open already. Shit :( So, we left the place and went to the city, to find maybe another place. There is a public beach area. And such places have mostly a parking place as well. But a big sign welcomed us ‘Camping not allowed’ :( Great.But the place was absolutely beautiful. We decided to eat at least dinner here. And we did it. We was sitting on a bench, direct on the Zurich lake, behind the alps – with snow on the hills – and was eating our dinner :) Just beautiful! Really!Generally is Switzerland a very beautiful country. So green and colorful. And the landscape and the hills… a dream. Also the people are very friendly.

After the dinner we went back to that hotel. It was late and dark already. We went to the restaurant and took a sit on the terrace. Nobody else was there, just inside was some people still sitting. We had a great view from there on the lake and the city.
Then the waiter came and asked us if we would like to drink something. We didn’t… but we asked him if we can stay over night on the parking and had a little chat with him about the journey. A few minutes later he came back to us and said that he spoke with the manager, if we can sleep there and the manager said yes and even said that we can take a shower in a room, which is not booked at the moment. Cool! :)

We had the plan now to went the next day to Zurich and then we wanted to come back, to spent one more night on that parking place. So we decided to take the shower next day. Who knows when we have next time the opportunity for a shower.
So, we said ‘Thank you’ and made the car ready for the night. The first night in the car.
Wasn’t so great then I thought. First I was freezing and in the morning I was sweating like hell. But else it was good. I think I need to get used to it.

Tuesday morning we got up around 10 and then straight to the next ferry dock. We wanted to drive with the boat to Zurich. First of all less stress then with the car and it’s something special. :) We drove from Zollikon. The ships are here like usual buses. They have a schedule and stations. You even have to buy a ticket :) And that doesn’t cost less… around 28 CHF for a ticket for one day. But therefore we went on the seaway to Zurich.

We walked absolutely unorganized thought the city. We had no idea where is was. So, we just followed our nose. In the water church and next to it into another church (I forgot the name). Here I went even up on the tower (for 4 CHF). Julia wasn’t in mood for it and was waiting in the church. The view from the tower was great. An overview over whole Zurich. Of course I made a lot of pictures! ;) Then back down and further in the city. We found even the townhall and the main train station. And then we had to go back to the ‘bus’ already.
The time was running like hell. :( One blink and the time is over.

In between we had a stop at Starbucks. I needed a coffee and we got the opportunity to get normal internet.
A friend wrote me, why I didn’t wrote her that I come to Switzerland. I check where she is living and saw that she is living in Chur… close Lichtenstein, which we wanted to visit the next day anyway.
So I offered her that we could come spontaneously to Chur, on the same evening. Then we could meet and for us it would have been also good to be closer to Lichtenstein already. She said that she has late shift that day and first around 11pm off. And next day morning shift. So, it was not clear if we could meet or not.

On the way back to the car we was thinking what to do now… and decided that we just drive there and then we will see what will happen. If the meeting would happen, would be nice (at least for me) and if not, then we would have been at least already closer to the next target. We miss our shower… but on Wednesday evening we planed anyway to visit a friend from Julia, where we could take also a shower.
And we did is like that. Back to the car (it started raining already on the way) and straight on the street in direction to Chur.
It was more then I thought. 120km… more then one hour to go. And again beautiful landscape… and this time lots of tunnel.

We arrived at Chur around 8. My friend didn’t wrote back anymore. We decided then to watch out for a nice place to sleep. I thought it would be good to check on the outskirts for a parking place for the night.
But all parking places we found had a sign ‘No camping!’… damn. :( Something which I really don’t like
We followed the street more and more outside of the city… until we went up and up the hill… and finally we saw a parking bay. Enough space for 2 cars… and a great view over the valley with the city below us and behind a big mountain with snow on the top again. Really a high class place! And the best… no sign ‘No parking’. :D

And here we are now. I will turn around in a minute and watch this great view for a while… before I will fall asleep…. until I will wake up in the morning again… with this great view again. :)

Cu soon and best regards from Chur in Switzerland
Gordon