The author set off on a three-week vacation trip across Europe in an electric car. Would the charging infrastructure be enough to get all the way, or would they end up stranded without battery, far from home?
Tag: road
Mongolia built an extensive road network on a permafrost foundation. Now, the permafrost is melting.
There are some things more terrifying than facing police arrest. In Märkisches Kreis, Germany, a driver had a special kind of ask from the officer who had pulled him over for speeding, according to German weekly magazine Stern. As the local police department reported on its official Twitter account, here’s how the conversation went: — […]
Why did the bear cross the road?
The center-right populist Italian government has recently bowed to Chinese flattery, announcing it was ready to sign a Memorandum of Understanding that will connect Rome and Beijing on a modern Silk Road. At the end of a long, slow path of decline and political confusion, Rome is in bad need of fresh investment to boost […]
WASHINGTON — How long must you live, how strong must be your memory, to turn back and say: damn it, this world has really changed. Look at the millennials, they seem to be better educated than the boomers, but they are sui generis in their thinking, seemingly inspired and shaped by memes rather than historical […]
-OpEd- PARIS — My conversation partner is a Japanese banker. He has just returned from Amman, the capital of Jordan. And he’s talking about the Chinese who were also there at a joint meeting of the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). “They were everywhere and everyone […]
LAUSANNE — “We struck off, heading for the horizon with a fever we thought could be cured by accumulating kilometers. But it just riled us up even more. Still, moving quenches something. It eases our melancholy at not having done anything with our lives, at having been born too early and having failed at everything. […]
Categories
North By Norway
This was the end of the road for us: Driving with my family from France in our Peugeot 404, our goal was to go as far north as possible, by way of Denmark and Sweden. What I didn’t know was that back then, about 100 kilometers north of the Norwegian capital Oslo, roads were in […]
PARIS: French civil engineering firm Colas has launched the world’s first “photovoltaic roads,” capable of withstanding the weight of cars and bicycles and producing electricity by exposure to sunlight. Known as “Wattway,” the concept could revolutionize solar energy production. Colas says that covering just 2.5% of France’s road and highway network would be enough to […]
I was told that on the spectacular road from Palma de Mallorca to the Sa Calobra Creek, there are more than 800 turns. Which didn’t discourage some fearless (reckless?) cyclists from racing downhill, in the middle of ongoing traffic.
Categories
Redundant Dunes
The road to El Oued is paved with good intentions! We’ve seen our share of strange road signs over the years, but being told to beware of sand while you’re driving in the middle of the Algerian desert definitely takes the cake.
Categories
The Road Back To Turkey
I will be going back to Turkey next month, some 46 years after I took this photo. One of my two granddaughters, Véronique, now lives near Izmir with her Turkish-born husband Mutlu and my great-granddaughter Ada.
Categories
Bus Crash In Kenya Kills 41
KENYAN RED CROSS, DAILY NATION (Kenya), AFP, ALL AFRICA Worldcrunch NAIROBI — At least 41 people died and 27 more were injured in a bus crash in Kenya Thursday morning, the Kenyan Red Cross said. “It is difficult to tell exactly what happened, but all indications point to speeding and possibly overloading,” police officer Samuel […]
PAPEETE – Regardless of what geographers might say, there is a certain proximity between Tahiti and Iceland… The lush green rock dropped in the middle of the southeast Pacific Ocean might be a hundred times smaller than the chunk of windswept ice in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, but insularity is not about surface or latitude. […]
CHANGSHA – When the Dazehu village chief told his constituents that a company was planning to build the tallest skyscraper in the world right there, in the swamps in front of the village, Mrs. Tan’s only reaction was: “All right then…” It takes more than that to overwhelm this 60-year old woman, who has become […]
THE JAPAN TIMES, ASAHI SHIMBUN (Japan), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch TOKYO – The Japanese government has ordered emergency inspections of road tunnels across the country after a roof collapse in the Sasago tunnel, on a highway west of Tokyo, killed nine people. BBC News says that emergency inspections of at least 20 tunnels of a […]