Charging in Jermuk, Armenia

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Benedikt and I seem to have developed a certain taste for spa cities or places that are famous for their mineral water. After Borjomi in Georgia (see this post) Jermuk is the second “mineral water town” that we choose as a destination. Like in Borjomi, we enjoyed taking staying in the nicest hotel of the city. We need sometimes “vacation from travelling” which we find in western style hotels that offer all the comfort one could imagine (at still low prices compared to western Europe). Five star hotels offered us during the journey once in a while a retreat where we can just relax and not worry about electricity, potholes, quality of food and many, many decisions that we need to take everyday. All of this is sometimes tiring…

We planned to stay for two nights in Jermuk. Therefore the offered Schuko outlet, was enough for us. The car was charged at 97% the day we left .
 On our “day off” Benedikt and I went on a hike on the hills above Jermuk. As we did before, we found pleasure in “eexploring” either vanished old hotels or skeletons of new dated but never finished hotels. Jermuk has been developed as a spa town during the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Many of the hotels and amusement areas of that time are outdated and abondoned since quite a while. For Benedikt and me these buildings seem like a big, adventurous playground. Contradictory, why any investor would want to add new hotels to the excessive supply of hotel beds in Jermuk, is still a question to us. Since we are travelling we question ourselves what drives people to start building big hotel complexes and stop not even half way done. We probably still think way to German (and educated) considering this topic…

Charging in Jerevan, Armenia

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Nici left early on Sunday morning after a fun evening with open-air cinema, film discussion and some drinks at Fabrica, a great place in Tbilisi. Benedikt and I charged the car one more time at the 22kW charging station in the city center of Tbilisi. The interest in the Tesla was very high this time. During the 20 minutes of charging the car, we were constantly surrounded by some men. If they weren’t looking at the different details of the car, they tried to buy our city scooter. We have two of those scooters with us. We want to use them for a fast and independent transportation in cities or during charging stops. So far, we didn’t use them a whole lot, because either the weather was too bad or the street quality too low. But this will change eventually, we believe 😉.

 

We escaped the crowed and left for the border between Georgia and Armenia. There was no line in front of the border, which was already a good sign. All in all, the border was easy. The only thing that took longer was to register the car to enter Armenia. We first didn’t know that we had to do this and as soon as we found out, the Swiss car documents (in German, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic) didn’t make the filling out of the documents much faster.

What surprised us after the border crossing, were really bad maintained roads. The number of deep put-holes was extremely high. During the first third of the trip, from the border till Yerevan, our average speed was between 10 and 50 km/h. Luckily the road got better and better the closer we got to Yerevan.

 

In Yerevan, we could charge the car at a Schuko in the garage of a small hotel close to the city center. We planned to stay for two nights in Yerevan. Therefor charging with only 2kW was ok. After about 24 hours the battery of the car was charged at 85% again. By chance we found a supermarket including a big Armenian food-court on our way out of the city. The supermarket had a underground garage with many three-phase outlets`! Our Turkish adapter, worked with the outlets (which is kind of ironic, considering the relationship between Armenia and Turkey). We were very happy about this finding and charged the car with 11kW while we were having lunch in the food-court.

Yerevan isn’t a particular beautiful city or old city, since a lot of soviet architecture dominates the cityscape. Nevertheless, Benedikt and I were both inspired by the friendly and laid-back culture of the city. Compared to Tbilisi, Yerevan is less touristic, less crowded and somehow maybe even (mainstream) hipper.

Charging in Ordu, Turkey

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In the evening, we reached Ordu. It’s a small town right at the black sea. Tourists are mainly Turkish or Arabian. The city just seemed to rebuild every road there was in the city and so it took us a while to reach a small hotel close to the sea front.

The hotel’s manager was very helpful, even though it needed some time convincing him, that we could charge at his place (otherwise we would have not stayed there). He found a Turkish three-phase outlet in the hotel’s kitchen. Benedikt built the adapter for the plug and about one hour after we arrived, the Tesla was ready to start charging. We arranged that we could charge overnight, after the kitchen stopped working, so our cable wouldn’t be in their way.

We left the hotel with a fully charged car the next morning to head further east towards Trabzon.

Charging in Ilgaz, Turkey

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Ilgaz Mountains have a cute little skiing resort. Since the skiing season just ended, there was almost nobody in the hotel we stayed at. To find out where to charge our car, we showed the receptionist our cheat sheet (we have a paper for each country we pass, with pictures and short explanation of who we are, what we need (three-phase electricity) and what that means (hours it needs to charge, kWh we will charge…)) . It helped her to understand that she needs to ask the hotel’s electrician. He would be the one who could help us. This person, accompanied of two of his colleagues, who were curious to see a Tesla, brought us to the abandoned garage at the backside of the hotel where we parked close to a modern three-phase outlet. Next to the modern red outlet a black, Turkish-style outlet was hanging. We did not build the adapter for that kind of outlet yet (but we bought that plug already, check out this post). Thankfully, the electrician rewired the modern red outlet so it would also have electricity on it.

Only a few minutes later we pluged in our NRGkick and started charging. I wish hotels would always be that cooperative and helpful as this hotel was. Benedikt and I already tried to find out some regularities on what kind of hotel is better to ask and what the best procedures are to receive three-phase electricity. So far, we probably got intuitively better to find the right places to ask. But since every country is a bit different, we don’t have the “most successful way” to ask for electricity yet.

Charging in Edirne, Turkey

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The first bigger town that we reached after the Bulgarian/Turkish border was Edirne. It was already early in the evening and again, we needed a hotel to stay at. The plan was to drive very early the next day to Istanbul. We wanted to be at the Uzbek Consulate in Istanbul before 10 a.m. to apply for our visa. Since our car was still pretty good charged and because we knew that charging should be easy in Istanbul, we stayed in Edirne in an very simple hotel that only offered us Schuko on their parking lot.

We bought that night two tourist SIM-cards for our phones. We thought that we need them to simplify our navigation through Turkey. The Tesla still had internet connection in Edirne, even though the city is already about 50km far from the border. What we didn’t expect that day, was that we would never loose internet connection till we left Turkey to Georgia more than a week later. We have a Tesla-roaming SIM-card with which we are supposed to be online all throughout the European Union (and Switzerland, of course). When we left Croatia, as the last European Country, we immediately lost the signal after the border. When we entered Bulgaria as the first European country after the Balkan countries, we immediately got the internet reception back (what made us quite excited 😉). Back to our SIM-cards: since we had internet in the Tesla, the urgent need wasn’t there anymore. But that these SIM-cards (by Vodafone) never started working (somehow the activation did not work) annoyed us. Two visits to Vodafone stores and lot of discussions and waiting didn’t help either. One cannot always be lucky…

Charging in Plovidiv, Bulgaria

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From plugshare we knew that electricity shouldn’t be hard to find in Plovidiv. Arriving at about 8 p.m. in the evening, we started to search for an hotel immediately. Even if there is a charging opportunity in a city, we still prefer staying in an hotel that offers us an electricity outlet. It is just convenient if the car is right outside of the building where we are staying at. This simplifies logistics a lot. After being denied in four hotels, we finally found one hotel where a super helpful receptionist managed to find a Schuko wall plug. Of course that Schuko did not give us a whole lot of electricity. To have 95% of the Tesla’s battery charged before leaving to Turkey, we put the car the next morning in the garage of a shopping center nearby.

Plovidiv is a nice city. A stroll through its roads sweetened our waiting time for the car to be fully charged. We left for the direction of Turkey in the early afternoon and reached the border with about 45% of our battery left.

Charging in Gijan, Kosovo

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Charging in Kosovo was a super easy task. Our host Bekim booked a hotel for us and already asked them to provide us with a three-phase outlet. We again used our three-phase plug from Montenegro. Our stay in Giljan extended itself to 4 days and it was never a problem to park the car right in front of the entrance, where the outlet was.

After a few days, we found out that a bank in Giljan downtown also offered a charging spot. Unfortunately, only one phase. The bank seems to have an EV and for that car the one phase is probably enough. Still, we were surprised to see something like this in Kosovo – one of many positive surprises in that country!

Click here for the biggest of those surprises.

Charging in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegowina

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Benedikt booked us a Hotel in Sarajevo that had good reviews, a parking lot and was big enough, so that we expected that they would have three-phase outlets. We arrived Sarajevo pretty low in battery (6-7%). At first the hotel offered us a three-phase outlet (it found it in the back of the building). Though, we did not have the right plug at that point of time.

Until we returned after the visit of some do-it-yourself-stores without having found the plug the hotel called the manager and owner of the hotel to find out that this person is scared of an electric vehicle taking too much electricity. Benedikt already started to improvise with the outlet (opening it to take out the phases and adjust them directly to our adapter), when some hotel person came up and told him to stop working. Even our offer to pay for electricity did not convince them. The Tesla had at that point of time about 4-5% of its battery left. I thought to myself, if this is, how every “electricity-search” is going to look like, the trip is not going to be fun.

One of the reasons why we were in Sarajevo was, that I really wanted to see the tunnel museum. It is a museum about the resistance of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war that is now 25 years ago. I read about it not long ago in the NZZ.  The museum was really interesting, but unfortunately it could not offer us any electricity.

Our last hope was the Marriott hotel in downtown Sarajevo that is offering a 22KW charging station to their guests. Hoping that they would also offer it to us, we drove to the hotel. For 12,50€ we could charge for 3 hours up to 95%. This was enough to make the journey to Kolasin, Montenegro the next day. Only after we parked our car at the Marriott hotel and started charging, we found out that the underground garage of the shopping center, that is only 500 meters from the Marriott, has plenty of 22KW three-phase outlets that we could have used for free… I guess the pretty low battery made us decide for the first best option.

That day realized that we made a few pretty bad beginner’s mistakes in Sarajevo:

  1. booking a hotel when depending on electricity to charge. One never knows if a hotel has a three-phase outlet available and if it wants to offer that to us. Having already booked a room minimizes the room to negotiate.
  2. not going right away for the hotel that offers charging. Even if the hotel is more expensive, the time and nerves one is saving with an easy-charge-solution is priceless.
  3. not searching in a large underground garage for electricity. We found so far in every large garage electricity (11 or 22KW). It is a shame, if one isn’t searching there for three-phase outlets as the first thing.

We left Sarajevo the next day almost fully charged and a bit smarter. Let’s hope it helps for the next “electricity-searches”.