From the Netherlands to Copenhagen
hey everyone!
I’m back with a new update about my recent adventures.
First, some exciting news that I haven’t mentioned in this newsletter: my wife and I bought a car! I’ve already talked about it on my YouTube channel and explained why we made this decision. My latest newsletter issue played a part in the whole process.
If you’re curious about the details of buying a car, here’s a video link:
This weekend, I went on my first multi-day road trip from the Netherlands to Copenhagen, Denmark.
We considered staying at a hotel overnight, but we had a great experience camping in our Tesla. Recently, I bought a new and even better mattress made specifically for the Tesla Model Y, so it was a perfect chance to test it out. The mattress is called the “Exped Megamat Auto”, in case anyone’s curious.
Since Copenhagen is known as one of the most bike‑friendly cities, we also brought along our bikes. We recently purchased a tow hitch for the Tesla and a bike rack, so this trip with bikes behind was another experiment for us.
The bike rack was generally easy to install and use, but one unexpected thing happened: we couldn’t use one of Tesla’s basic Autopilot features—Autosteer. You can still use Traffic‑Aware Cruise Control, which maintains speed and distance from other cars, but you have to steer manually.
It was a bit disappointing because Autosteer is a fantastic feature for road trips and really helps on long distances. I assume it needs the back cameras, which are probably blocked by the bike rack.
After driving about 150 km through the Netherlands, we reached the German border, but then I realised I had forgotten all my documents, including my driver’s license. That was a real low point of the trip.
In Europe, you can easily get relaxed about carrying IDs because nobody ever asks for them. However, it felt too risky to continue driving through multiple countries without any identification, so I decided to turn back.
On the first day, I ended up driving an extra 350 kilometers (back home and then back to the German border again). I almost reached our planned overnight stop, it required several hours of driving in the dark, which I don’t particularly enjoy.
Eventually, we found a parking spot north of Hamburg around 1 a.m. and had a sleepover there. I discovered a great app called park4night, which is mostly used by campervan owners to find places to sleep anywhere in the world.
Surprisingly, we had an amazing sleepover. It was in a large shopping mall’s parking lot, and we even had a nice breakfast and coffee nearby the next morning.
The sleeping mat turned out to be extremely comfortable, almost as good as sleeping at home. This mat has a foam layer on top of an air mattress, so it feels like a real foam mattress you have on your bed. You can also adjust the firmness by letting in or releasing air. We brought our pillows from home, so that added to the comfort.
I do like staying in hotels, but there’s something special about road‑tripping, sleeping in a car, waking up close to nature while still feeling protected and comfortable, and hitting the road right away.
The second day, I drove the rest of the trip, making it in total 1300+ km driving. First impressions of Danish roads were very positive: the infrastructure and roads are as good as in The Netherlands and people have a very nice driving culture. Of course, the electric cars and charging stations here are everywhere. It’s probably the most number of Teslas I have seen on the streets (but I still haven’t been to Norway), more than I noticed in Sweden and back home.
I’ll be staying in Copenhagen for the next seven days, and I’m really looking forward to exploring the city. There will be a full video about this city, so make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel!
see you soon!
written in Copenhagen’s library 🇩🇰