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Winter Tour 2008 – Day 1: After having coffee and pie in Bocholt, we wanted to make some kilometers but stopped in Duisburg at the Duisburg-North Landscape Park for dinner. The landscape park Duisburg-North is a former metallurgical plant in Duisburg-Meiderich, which was shut down in 1985. Most of the plant was saved from demolition, and each weekend at night the light installation of the British artist Jonathan Park transforms it into a surrealistic post-industrial landscape. Access is free and there is also a camper park for those who want to stay longer.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 9: Soon after Trigance, we reached the Verdon Gorge, the world’s second largest gorge with a length of 25 kilometers and up to 700 meters deep. We’ve visited this impressive canyon a couple of time before but each time it is worth the visit. It is just breathtaking to see the ravine, which the turquoise-green Verdon river has cut through the limestone.

The Verdon river flows into the artificial Sainte-Croix lake, which was our final destination for the day. In les Salles-sur-Verdon we wanted to stay on a campground were Chris and I have been many years before on one of our first trips.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 5: In the morning we took the bikes and went into the center of Freiburg to go shopping and take some pictures. Freiburg is really a bike friendly town and reminded me a lot of Amsterdam. With the bikes we also went to the Ökostation, an ecological eduction center not too far away from the motor home parking. Later we went to the Solar Factory. It has a small cafeteria but otherwise there is not much to see except for the interesting building. It would have been nice to see how solar panels are actually being made.

Nearby is also the Solar House Freiburg of the Frauenhofer-Institute, which is a completely self-sufficient house. Next stop was at the Sonnenschiff (Solar Ship), an apartment, office and shopping complex. On the roof, 1000 square meters of solar panels generate about 100.000 kW/h electricity per year. Directly next to the Sonnenschiff one can see the Solarsiedlung, an ecological housing project with 58 family houses.

After this much inspiration it was time for us to move on and after a short stop in Breisach am Rhein we were heading towards Switzerland.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 4: In the afternoon we arrived in Freiburg im Breisgau. In Germany Freiburg is known as ecological solar city and because of that we were looking forward to visit it.

On our way to the motor home parking we already passed the apartments on Wilmersdorfer Street with their solar front. Those buildings have been refurbishment in 2001. Next to solar architecture Freiburg also has a solar panel factory and is the hometown of some ecological organizations.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 4: When we travel we usually just plan a little bit and otherwise collect information abount interesting places to see when we are somewhere and then decide what do to and where to go next. This is how it went with the cactus nursery Kakteenland in Steinfeld, which we saw advertised in a local magazine.

Kakteenland offers more than 1000 different cacti and about 600 other succulent plants on display in a gigantic greenhouse and is free to visit.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 4: First thing in the morning we went and visited the Speyer Museum of Technology, which is housed in a former aircraft hangar from the year 1913, now classified as an historical monument. Here one can view airplanes, locomotives, fire engines and old-timers.

In a way it was a strange but fascinating and sometime overwhelming collection of mostly vehicles. It made me wonder why many technological areas like information technologies and photography were not represented. It was fun though to climb on planes and trains and see them from the inside, especially the gigantic Antonov AN-22 transport plane.