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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.