
For anyone who does not want to listen to the podcast, we have a transcript of episode 1.
Mark and Anders discuss their friendship and how they met online through shared interests in family travel. They highlight the importance of exposing children to different cultures through travel.
The conversation shifts to the practicalities of travel, such as passport validity and visa requirements. They share personal anecdotes about visa issues and passport mishaps.
The duo also delves into the benefits of travelling, including personal growth, cultural understanding, and the importance of being open-minded. They emphasize the need to be respectful of different cultures and to challenge one’s own perspectives.
Finally, they discuss the rising costs of passports and the increasing complexity of international travel.
Southern Summers and Northern Winters Podcast Episode 1
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the first episode of Southern Summers and Northern Winters, our new podcast covering travelling with families or travelling as a family, travelling with kids. Hey, Mark, how are you doing?
Mark
00:27
I’m good, Anders. How are you today?
Anders
00:28
I am really good. I am really good. And let’s just right off the bat mention that Mark and I are physically situated.
Anders
00:40
I don’t think we could be further apart, Mark. Definitely not.
Mark
00:44
I don’t know for sure. But I would think that there’s not too many further places away than Munich and a small country town near Melbourne in Australia.
Anders
00:52
No, no. So, but I don’t know. I haven’t even seen, we could probably Google this, the distance in kilometers, but yeah, I am in Central Europe, southern Germany, Munich, and Mark, as mentioned, near Melbourne in Australia.
Anders
01:08
Mark, let’s start off. How did you and I get to connect in the first place? Why are we even here?
Mark
01:16
Well, I think we met online maybe around, I would say, probably around 2016 when you and your family had a family travel blog and me and my family had a family travel blog and I’m sure we met on quite possibly on Twitter or some sort of Facebook family travel forum that we would have both been in at that stage so that’s how we first touched base and since then I think we have met 3 times. Twice in Munich, maybe in 2017 in Munich and 2019. And we also shared a cup of coffee and a pastry at Copenhagen Airport 1 morning when we happened to be crossing paths.
Anders
02:05
That’s true. I had actually, that had slipped my mind. That’s true.
Anders
02:10
We, yeah.
Mark
02:11
We did. It slipped my mind too. I was thinking about it yesterday.
Mark
02:14
I was thinking, We’ve only met Anders and his family twice and I thought no, we met him at Copenhagen Airport.
Anders
02:20
Yes, that’s true.
Mark
02:20
Which was only a few days I think or a few weeks after we’d actually caught up with you in Munich, but you happened to be going through Copenhagen for business or something. Yes, that’s correct. And we were coming from Reykjavik in Iceland to Copenhagen and then onto Dubrovnik.
Mark
02:37
So yeah, it all just sort of fell in line for a cup of coffee and another chat at a random, well, not random, but at an airport. Like a sliding doors moment, wasn’t it? You would go 1 way or we would go the
Anders
02:48
other way? It really was. It really was.
Anders
02:49
It was, it was, and, and, yeah, well, you know, you have to grab every opportunity you can to, to, to catch up. And thankfully we have modern technology to, to connect globally with, with like-minded people. And, and, And you and I, we are actually a very good example of that. How online acquaintances can turn into real life friendships.
Anders
03:20
Cause I feel I’m privileged to really consider you and your family as friends. And we enjoy very much interacting online and now also through this podcast.
Mark
03:33
It’s definitely. I’ve met some cracking people like online that I’ve then met in real life, like a number of different families as you probably have as well. In our travels around the world, whether we’ve, you know, and I’ve kept in touch with a with a lot of them on online.
Mark
03:49
I’ve got like number of friends that we’ve gone back and visited on on numerous occasions when we’ve gone overseas that we’ve met. So yeah, it’s a sort of really opens up the world to you. Like Once upon a time, I couldn’t imagine that I would be sitting here talking to a friend that I met overseas, just on the internet now, and having a random chat about something we both love, which is travel.
Anders
04:12
Yeah, exactly. How did you get into travel in the first place? How did that all start?
Mark
04:19
Being from a small country town, I always wanted to see the world. Like our little town of 4, 000 people certainly wasn’t huge on experiences. And When I think about it a bit my dad was a bit of a traveler never went anywhere But it was always excited about going on holidays and things like that like even locally So I think that sort of sort of gave me a little bit of excitement about doing things I remember as a kid, you know Going packing the car up with a tent and we drove from Maffra all the way to the North Coast of New South Wales up near Coffs Harbour, which would have been, when I think about it, possibly 18 hours in a car.
Mark
04:55
But you know, I remember stopping along the way and my mum used to always tell me a story about me as a four-year-old running up and down the stairs of the Sydney Opera House with no shoes on and things like that. And being a little rascal or a rat bag, as you know, they might say over here. So they probably sowed the seeds of my traveling adventures. And then when I got old enough, I took off by myself for the first time in about 1999 and headed to Europe for a bit of a short vacation and stayed with some cousins in northern England in a place called St.
Mark
05:27
Helens, which is near in between Manchester and Liverpool. And then I jumped on a tour and did a bit of a tour around Europe before coming home, which definitely then embedded a love for wanting to see more of the world than my little town.
Anders
05:42
Yeah, interesting. It’s 1 thing for a European like me, thinking about going 18 hours in a car, I mean, you’re still in the same country. I guess you could say Australia is a continent, really.
Anders
05:57
And for me, like 18 hours in a car, It’s like you go through 3456 countries here in Europe.
Mark
06:04
You’d nearly drive into the Middle East or Asia in 18 hours from Germany, wouldn’t you? You’d surely get to Turkey in 18 hours, wouldn’t
Anders
06:13
you? From where I’m sitting, yes, you would. You would indeed.
Mark
06:17
So yeah, you’d be driving onto a different continent.
Anders
06:21
Absolutely. Yeah, Turkey. Yeah, that’s Middle East.
Mark
06:24
Yeah. Yeah. Middle East, Asia, Europe, it has put in all continents, I think Turkey does depending on where the political landscape is at any 1 time.
Anders
06:33
Yeah, yeah. Well, Turkey is a huge, yeah, because it stretches from, yeah, from in the east, the Mediterranean Sea and all the way, I don’t know, thousands of kilometers. Wow.
Mark
06:50
Yes, in the central Asia and down the bottom at the border of Syria, I think, or 1 of them countries.
Anders
06:58
Have you been to Turkey?
Mark
07:00
I have not been to Turkey. Me neither. I really want to go to Turkey.
Mark
07:04
Yeah. I want to go to Turkey for a number of reasons. It looks really interesting, but from an Australian point of view, there’s a long history of Australians in Turkey, especially World War history from World War 1. There’s a place called Anzac Cove that we celebrate Anzac Day every year in Australia to commemorate these people that died on the beaches of Gallipoli, which is in Turkey.
Mark
07:31
So there’s a lot of Australians that make a pilgrimage there every year to celebrate that. That wouldn’t be my main reason, but I’d certainly like to go and have a look at that area.
Anders
07:39
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s 1 of the things that, because I mean, for a number of reasons, Turkey is, at least in Europe, is in the debates about the political landscape and all. The good thing about traveling like we do is we come across all kinds of cultures and political opinions and it’s just, it’s hard to completely ignore politics, but usually, you know, you and I don’t engage with professional politicians and, but so we meet regular people and regular people are always nice.
Mark
08:26
You would like to think that travel sort of transcends that sort of stuff, because as travelers none of us are going there to be political in any way, shape or form. You know, what other countries do is what other countries do and whether I agree with it or not, that’s their country and it’s their culture and it’s, you know, up to sometimes up to their people, you know, not necessarily foreigners coming in and out.
Anders
08:53
If anything, I think travelling can actually open your eyes, because usually people sit at home and they look through their own eyes and consider the entire world through own values that you’re used to, you live by in your everyday life. But getting out there and seeing other cultures, experiencing other cultures, interacting with local people, will, if anything, broaden your horizon. And that’s just the wonderful thing about it.
Anders
09:31
It’s so enriching, really,
Mark
09:33
traveling. Well, it’s 1 of the best reasons to actually take kids travelling, you know, if you can expose them to different cultures, different religions, different ways of life. I believe that they’ll be more tolerant and adaptable adults who are far more easier to accept different views and things like that. Because if they’ve experienced, for say without sounding bad or anything, like they’ve been to Muslim countries, they’ve been to, you know, places in Africa, I guess, where there’s poverty, you know, they’ve been…
Mark
10:09
Watched politicians talk about, you know, different things that they may not agree with, and hopefully, you know, when you expose your kids to this sort of broad church or broad thoughts of ideas and that they can take them in and then realize like what I said that not all the world’s the same and not everyone’s going to be the same as us but you know you just got to take from it what you can learn and move on.
Anders
10:34
We had that exact same philosophy when we, our son was only 3 years old, barely 3 years old when we left on our, we had a 1 year journey around the world in 2013 and 2014. And it was for that exact reason that we wanted him to experience all kinds of nature, all kinds of people. We did only travel in safe countries, I would say.
Anders
11:06
I mean, we went to Australia, New Zealand, USA, Ireland, England. But it was for that reason that seeing the world as early as possible in your life will certainly broaden your horizon. And even today he’s 14 and I can, I can say, you know, he, his mind is open in many ways to the world? And he likes to, before even making a personal opinion about anything, he likes to do his research and read up on stuff and try to see things from many perspectives.
Anders
11:50
And so I guess we succeeded on that 1. That was certainly our intention and we tried to live by it. Although you can always fall into a pit where you say, oh, these and these and these people, they are, they’re always like that and that. But but you know, we’re only humans.
Anders
12:08
Well, and that’s it,
Mark
12:09
you know, you can only take people at face value, I guess. So you know, and you, like we said, you meet a lot of people in your travels from a lot of different backgrounds and you know, you try and take the best bits from it and learn and develop your own opinions from meeting lots of different people and, and you know, go on from there. Like there’s, there’s a lot of people, I guess in this world today with a lot of strong opinions about things.
Mark
12:36
Their opinion may not be my opinion, but my opinion may not be right and theirs may not be right, but we all should be tolerant of what each other thinks, I guess, and Be respectful of that.
Anders
12:47
I remember once that was in New Zealand. We visited on the Southern Island, we visited a sheep station, which was also, or still is a bed and breakfast, I guess. And there was a guy there named Tony and he had traveled a lot.
Anders
13:09
And he had opened up this bed and breakfast in order to stay connected to the world because New Zealand is pretty far away. And I guess he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to travel indefinitely. So he settled down there, but he made sure that he had a way to connect with people from all over the world. And he talked about this, you know, overseas experience.
Anders
13:39
Have you had an overseas experience? That was his term. And he referred to, you know, get into deeper discussion, he would engage with anyone, but getting into a more substantial discussion when people had some perspective to add. And getting around is the way to do that.
Mark
14:05
Well, it is. I think I said this earlier in a chat before we recorded this, that I often think that it’s too easy to think that where you live is how the world is. And that’s certainly not correct.
Mark
14:18
There’s a big, big world out there and it will be definitely different than where you live in every country you go to, every state of every country you go to and possibly every 50 kilometers up the road like you know will be different than than where you live so you know there’s a big world to explore and We need to get out there and explore it.
Anders
14:36
Absolutely, absolutely. And this is the foundation to any listener still here. This is the foundation for the podcast.
Anders
14:46
This is why we do this. We love to talk about the act of traveling as a theme in itself, but also what traveling brings to you as a human being. So 1 of the things we talked about in 1 of our early chats as well, Mark, was the importance of having a valid passport. Maybe we should say that these conversations are unscripted.
Anders
15:16
We have an overall topic, but we will wander down paths that just through the art of conversation, this is where we go.
Mark
15:28
There’ll be many backstreets in LA’s Explore.
Anders
15:30
Yeah, exactly. But 1 of the things that came up was the importance of actually having a valid passport, which to my surprise, as it turns out, is not something that all people have on their radar, apparently.
Mark
15:52
No, this is true. And a lot of people who do even actually have a valid passport often forget to check it. The amount of stories I read on Facebook in travel groups about people going to the airport tomorrow, but then realizing that their passport is out of date in 2 months or something like that.
Mark
16:10
What can I do? What can I do? Well, I don’t think you do anything the day before. Exactly.
Anders
16:16
I was surprised because, I mean, maybe it’s just the way I was brought up. You have your official papers in order. And you can’t say, well, a passport is not a necessity.
Anders
16:29
Well, it is if you want to travel internationally. So for me, a passport was always, you know, well, we need to make sure that we have at least at least 6 months rest time of the valid period. Validity, yeah, for sure. Validity, yeah.
Anders
16:49
Yeah, it’s because there are countries that won’t let you in if you have less.
Mark
16:56
No. And not even just with 6 months left. If your passport’s got a crease in it or a tear in it or a watermark, I see more and more of that lately that they don’t let you in. I don’t really know what that has to do with it not being valid unless the watermark or the rippies where the chip that they put in in these days is.
Mark
17:16
Other than that, I think it’s just being a little bit picky, but
Anders
17:19
there are, there are, there are, there are, customs agents or the border patrol people who will take pleasure in just harassing you with that because I mean, really, if you have a chipped passport nowadays, it really shouldn’t be an issue.
Mark
17:37
No, not at all.
Anders
17:39
No. But yeah, it’s, I mean, passports hopefully will get worn and torn. I mean, the more stamps you have in them. Yep, most definitely.
Mark
17:52
But the whole stamp in the passport is disappearing, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. A lot of countries no longer have a stamp.
Mark
17:58
I know Australia no longer stamps their passports. I’ve been to a few different countries that no longer stamp their passports. Indonesia has just taken this up as well. We used to go to Bali and line up in a line to get stamped in.
Mark
18:12
Now they’ve joined the modern times and got the electronic gates where you just go up and you know scan your passport underneath and it opens up and lets you through that’s for sure. I can tell you China still puts a stamp on their passport and still rigorously looks at your passport for a good few minutes.
Anders
18:31
So if I came to Australia tomorrow and came with my, well, I have a Danish passport, I wouldn’t get anything visible to tell me how long my temporary visa would work?
Mark
18:48
Well, that I don’t know because you have to apply for entry,
Anders
18:51
don’t you?
Mark
18:52
Oh, yeah, that’s true. So overseas people. So I don’t know whether that actually gets pasted into your passport.
Mark
19:00
I don’t know whether they have. I don’t think it does because I reckon that you did supply for it online and you get a printout. I remember going to Vietnam and that’s what we had to do in Vietnam. We just applied it online, got a printout, showed them the copy of it when we went through and they would just stamp it.
Mark
19:15
But then again, like you said, Australia doesn’t stamp it. I assume there would be like, there would be data and bio, biometrical data to say when you entered the country. And if you went out too long, then they would surely tell you about it.
Anders
19:27
And in the airport, I mean, you get you go through immigration anyway. They still have immigration at the end of the day. They want to check your papers.
Anders
19:35
And I remember going to New Zealand, we did get a stamp to tell the stamp said, you know, 3 months from from this day, and it would actually say which date was the last valid date to leave the country again. So you know, it’s just, I mean, I’m just thinking practically here. It is always nice if you forget, oh, when do we actually have to leave? We knew this when we were travelling, but it’s a nice thing to have that confirmed black
Mark
20:06
and white. It can be confusing, you’re correct. Our family travelled long term in 2019 for about 14 months.
Mark
20:14
We spent some of that time in Europe. For Australians and a lot of people outside of Europe, you’ve got to abide by the Schengen rule, which means that you can only spend 60 days, no, 90 days out of every 180 days, I think, in the European Union. So that can be hard to juggle. There’s a lot of counters online that I used because we were popping in and out of the European Union at that time, because you went to England and that was different, Even though England was in the EU, I think at that stage, it was outside of the Schengen rule for some reason.
Mark
20:54
So if you went there or you went to Croatia or there was a few other different countries down there, Montenegro, places like that, that weren’t in the Schengen. So I had to have a counter, an app on my phone that would tell me, okay, when are my days up and when can I go back into the EU after my valid time’s up? But you can also get around it being an Australian. We actually have a bilateral visa agreement with a lot of countries that I didn’t really know, including Germany.
Mark
21:22
Australians get to Germany for 90 days outside of the Schengen because we have a bilateral visa agreement. But I actually wrote to the German embassy in Australia to ask them about this. And he sent me an email, they did, and they said, but what you really actually have to do is you need to fly into Germany first, and you need to tell the border guard, hey, I’m here on a 90-day bilateral agreement that you have with Australia. So it’s outside of my Schengen.
Anders
21:49
So you can actually have the 90 days on top of the internal.
Mark
21:53
The other 90 days. Yes. Yeah, you can.
Mark
21:57
You know, you’re not meant to leave Germany, but you know, back then, or even now, even I did read that they have reinstated some borders in Germany. Is this correct? I don’t know. I read this the other day.
Anders
22:07
Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark
22:08
That there’s some checks going on again. But back in them, back when we were doing that, there was none. And so we had friends in Freiburg, so I would have, which is close to the border of France and Switzerland.
Mark
22:18
So I assumed back then I would have just been able to get in the car and drive over the border and they would never have known that I was leaving Germany on my bilateral visa agreement. But I suppose if you got caught outside of it on it then your Schengen visa would probably start and you’d waste your 90 days you know what I mean?
Anders
22:38
Yeah, you would probably have an hour or 2 of just you know having to explain yourself but they would probably just you know things would be sorted out I guess. Yeah because
Mark
22:50
they were strong on that Like the guy from the German embassy said, you must stay in Germany for that 90 days and you must not leave Germany because that’s, you know, if you’re on this 90 day bilateral visa agreement, that’s where you’re going. And do not leave. Yeah, because if you get caught, then you know, then you’ll be considered to be on your 90 days of Schengen.
Mark
23:11
Yeah,
Anders
23:12
we had a we had an experience We had on our world tour we had Around the world ticket booked I mean around the world ticket We can get into that in a later episode, but Around the World ticket is You use an airline alliance and you book all your major flights, your long haul flights in 1 row and you follow the same route or the same direction around the globe. And you can do this. You can, you can, you can book your ticket.
Anders
23:48
We did it for a year. So we had all the major stops for 12 months. We had them already booked and whatever we would do internally in each country, we would just book separately. But we entered the United States and the travel agency that we had booked the Around the World ticket through, they had made a mistake.
Anders
24:12
They had taken 3 calendar months. So I think we arrived on the 3rd of November and we thought we had until December, January, February, 3rd of February or March, but no, 3rd of March. No, 3rd of February. Sorry, I can’t count the months.
Anders
24:33
So until the 3rd of February, but it turned out they were counting 90 days, not 3 calendar months, but 90 days. So there was actually, I think there was a discrepancy of 2 days.
Mark
24:44
Couple of days, yeah, definitely.
Anders
24:45
And the border patrol, they didn’t care. They said, these are the rules. And we had a ticket where we were supposed to leave like 2 days later than our visa would allow.
Anders
24:58
So we had a heated discussion with our travel agency because, I mean, we had an agreement with them. They had booked, they had, they had sorted out the tickets for us. That’s what we paid them for. So, but it’s, it was sorted.
Anders
25:13
They had to rebook the flights at their cost. So, so all was good.
Mark
25:18
As they should.
Anders
25:19
Yeah. As they should. This was fine. There was there was nothing there, but it just you know, we had to take the discussion and we had to we had a day or 2, you know, where we just oh man, what are we What are we going to do if this doesn’t work out?
Anders
25:34
Which obviously it did. I mean, but still, you know, you had some stress there.
Mark
25:39
I’ve fallen into that trap before myself because first time I went to Asia, I’d only actually been to Europe before. And so most places in Europe were 60 or 90 days. So when I went to Asia, the first time I just assumed that you had 60 or 90 days and I landed in Indonesia and I had booked like 35 days or something like that.
Mark
26:02
But you can only get a 30 day visa. So I actually had to go to immigration in Bali while I was there to extend it. It wasn’t a hassle, but yeah, it was just to cost extra money, obviously, to extend your visa that I wasn’t really planning on spending at that stage. But hey, these things happen, don’t they, to all of us, I
Anders
26:23
guess. So yeah, the importance of having a valid passport is, And in general, have your visas and travel papers in order is something we can cover, probably are going to cover many, many times in this podcast series because it always comes up and It’s just so important at any point in time when you travel internationally. It’s really… I wanted to ask you this.
Anders
26:55
There’s a list of the best passports in the world and where they will allow you to travel. Where does Australia rank on this?
Mark
27:07
I don’t know if it’s all that high, to be honest with you. I know that we, I don’t know any countries that we’re not allowed to travel to. That’s for sure, there probably is.
Mark
27:17
I mean, yeah, but I don’t really know. But I know 1 thing about Australian passports and that is that they are the dearest passport to obtain in the world. An Australian passport for 10 years will cost you 400 Australian dollars or about 250, 260 euros for 10 years, so it’s a lot of money. Most people think it’s a lot of money.
Mark
27:41
The Treasurer of Australia, he doesn’t think it’s a lot of money. He says it’s great value at $40 a year. But then when I hear people who only pay, you know, the equivalent of a hundred or $150 Australian a year, and I think, well, they’re $15 or $10 a month. Sounds way better value than my, than my $40 a month, especially when there’s 4 of you that you have to pay for these sort of prices.
Anders
28:03
In Germany it’s about 70-80 euros and in Denmark a little higher. My Danish passport is I think about 110-120 euros. It’s a little less for our teenage son because it’s only 5 years validity.
Anders
28:25
So it’s a little cheaper, but still, you know, it’s nowhere near what you guys in Australia pay. It’s obscene amounts.
Mark
28:34
Well, this is true. So actually, I just quickly looked up what you asked me. Is it powerful?
Mark
28:39
The Australian passport is among the top 5 most powerful in the world according to new rankings. Oh, there you go. So from joint eighth last year. So I’m not quite sure what strength actually means.
Mark
28:51
You know, does it mean the amount of countries that you get into? I don’t know. Like, I don’t know anywhere you can’t really go, can you? Is there, I mean, there’s probably a few countries that are banned and each country has, Australia has this thing called Smart Traveller, I think it’s called, and they have, it’s run by the government, so they give you warnings on countries you can go to, or countries you really shouldn’t go to.
Mark
29:12
And in reality, you should follow that because a lot of travel insurance can be null and void if you go to a country that’s on the list by your home government that says you shouldn’t go there. Oh yeah. So that’s an interesting 1. If you go there and get stuck and the government has put out a warning and said that country’s you know only for you know you only really go there if you must, if you’ve got family or things like that and you go there and something happens.
Mark
29:38
Well, yeah, your travel insurance will say, well, you’re stuck there. So go start a go fund me page and go for your life.
Anders
29:44
Just out of curiosity, what’s the top 5 there? You said Australia is in the top 5? Let me have
Mark
29:49
a look yeah where else I just had this page here I think it said Singapore was number 1.
Anders
29:55
0 wow.
Mark
29:55
Singapore okay so it does go by location so Singapore you can get out of 195 locations France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain are equal second apparently at 192 different locations. So yeah, it goes on the number of locations that you can go to. 1 of the takes into consideration whether you need visas and things like that for for countries.
Mark
30:20
I know Being Australian we need a visa nearly to go Everywhere and a lot of that’s not just because of who we are It’s because we require people to have a visa to come to our country. So it’s a bit like, you know, tick-tock like, yeah, that’s it. If you’re gonna make our people pay a visa to get in, we’re gonna make your people pay visas to get in. And that happens nearly all over Asia.
Anders
30:47
That’s how diplomacy works.
Mark
30:49
Yeah, I can’t really think of a country we’ve been to in Asia, possibly besides maybe Singapore, where you didn’t need a visa. I think you didn’t need 1 in Thailand. I think they granted it on arrival, but I can’t remember whether I had to actually pay for it or not.
Mark
31:07
So, but definitely countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, they all required visas to go there. So that were, you know, relatively, they’re probably expensive. They’re probably over a hundred bucks for all of us or $150, maybe 40. Actually, I think the ones, we got a lot of visas done when we were quite finally in Vientiane in Laos, which is the capital city, which is a really strange place to get visas done.
Mark
31:36
We happened to be there for about 10 days. It was a very exciting city and we didn’t know that at the time. So we were just sort of love there. So while we were there, we did a bit of a lap and we went and got a Cambodian visa while we were there.
Mark
31:46
We got a Chinese visa while we were there. So we were doing the laps of all the embassies while we were there at that stage. So yeah, but it was quite easy. And like you can get a lot of visas on the border, But I was told that going from Thailand to Cambodia, you know, you might have to pay a bribe at the border if you haven’t got 1 and you have to pay this and that.
Mark
32:09
So I thought if I go and get 1 at the at the embassy, then I’ve already got the visa and they can’t say that you need to, you know, you need to pay all these extra fees and things like that. So I sort of, I sort of cut it off by pre emptying it and getting visas at home or at the embassy whenever I can, instead of, instead of on the border if possible, especially in Asia.
Anders
32:28
Yeah. Yeah. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, if you realize that your passport is no longer valid, the day before you have to leave, you have a serious situation. Obviously, it’s solvable.
Anders
32:46
It will probably cost you a lot of extra money. And I guess in Australia, you would have to physically travel to a place where they actually issue passports to even get it into your hands. But what’s the normal sort of service time from ordering to actually having the passport physically in your hands. What’s that around where you live?
Mark
33:13
I think at the moment in Australia it’s around 10 days to 2 weeks but during COVID, once COVID finished, Australians wanted to travel and Australians were putting their foot down and we wanted to get
Anders
33:24
out of here
Mark
33:25
because we had some of the strictest lockdown rules in the world at that stage and at that stage the passport office had blown out to around 10 weeks to get a passport because there was that many people looking for new passports. So yeah, it was really crazy at that stage. But hence, That’s why the government justified putting their passports up to $400 because we have to make more presses and we have to modernize it and we have to streamline the process to make it faster and all things like that.
Mark
33:57
So yeah, but apparently you can get
Anders
33:59
an emergency passport in 24 hours. Within 24 hours, yeah, okay.
Mark
34:03
Yeah, it does say this here on the internet. At an extra cost. Oh yeah.
Mark
34:09
Should there be a big cost?
Anders
34:10
I would think. Is the procedure easy? Because this is another thing.
Anders
34:14
I’m situated in Germany and Germans are not, the German society is not well known for being the most progressive in terms of technology, to put it mildly. In many aspects, it’s very analog. But my native Denmark, in Denmark it’s easy and it’s within just a few days, you actually go to the city hall, there’s a service desk at any city hall. You don’t even have to live in the same city.
Anders
34:42
You can just go into any city hall in Denmark And there’s a citizen service desk where you have your driver’s license renewed or your passport or whatever you have of official business, you can go there. And my son and I, we went there And it literally took like, we even had a photograph taken in a photo booth and it was immediately cleared and they check, you know, are the angles right and you’re not allowed to smile. You have to look in this camera at a certain angle and all these things. It was immediately cleared.
Anders
35:18
It was immediately done right. And within 24 hours, we had our passports. I got a text and I was like, you can pick them up now. I mean, that’s the best case scenario, but in many, many other countries, it’s just not that easy getting your passport.
Mark
35:39
That sounds like a fantastic system. Because I live in a country it could be different if I was in Melbourne and I went to the passport office like that might expedite the situation if I was able to go directly to the office. But when you live outside a capital city, I guess, where there is a direct passport office, all your passports Get processed through the local post office through Australia posts.
Mark
36:03
So okay. Yeah, you go down to your local post office with With your money with your application form Which you hopefully download on line or you can actually go to the post office and pick up a physical copy of the application for some people that still, you know, want a physical copy and don’t want to do it on, don’t want to print, or don’t have a printer to print it out online, should I say. So then you just print it out, fill in some details and at Australia Post they will then take the photo for you. So like a white projector screen drops from the roof.
Mark
36:35
They take the photo, process the photos for you. They charge you an extra $25 for your photos on top of you. You’re already $400 that you’ve paid and they check off your identification that you take with you to say who you are. And they sign off on it.
Mark
36:53
And then it goes away to the passport office. And then you get a slip in the mail for registered mail to say that your passport has arrived back at the local post office. So then you go down and show them ID and they hand over your passport and away you go. So hopefully they stay here as quick as 10 days sometimes or in the country anyway, in the city, like I said, if you go to the passport office, maybe it’s only a couple of days.
Mark
37:16
I’m not sure. Yeah.
Anders
37:18
And 1 thing I noticed with the Danish passport that I got 1 and a half years ago, I also had to actually, they took my fingerprint. I don’t know if they do that in Australia, but they did in Denmark. And it’s not, I don’t know for what they use it.
Anders
37:36
I think maybe it can be identification, maybe on the chip physically, there’s a chip in the passport. Maybe there’s a fingerprint diagram or something there. So I don’t know, but it was an interesting extra security feature, I must say, and I was a little, whoa, what are you using that for?
Mark
37:59
Yeah, I’m Just trying to remember whether I actually had to do a fingerprint or not. No, I don’t think you do if you’re in Australia, but if you are outside of Australia, apparently then you do need to supply a fingerprint like. So I guess if you’re renewing your passport outside of Australia apparently you need to do some biometric data like that.
Anders
38:23
Yeah yeah so you mean if you go to like an embassy or consulate? Yeah yeah yeah
Mark
38:27
I assume just to prove who you are because you know in the end I guess in reality you know they’ve got all our data and all our, all our metrics that are hidden somewhere or stored somewhere in some big, you know, computer bank that’s churning away in the background of life.
Anders
38:44
Yeah, but I guess, I guess it’s The more I think about it, maybe it does make sense because for instance, traveling to the US, you go through immigration, you have to leave your fingerprints. They will ask you to put your thumb on a scanner. And if there’s some kind of connection so that they can actually identify you with your passport and the fingerprint stored there, well, maybe it does make sense.
Anders
39:17
Maybe it could even speed up the process. That would, that would, that would be a bonus.
Mark
39:21
That happens in Australia too. Now that I think about it, when you come back into the country, you have to drop the 2 thumbs on the, on the scanner. If you’re using, If you’re using the smart gates anyway, so that’s what you’ve got to do.
Mark
39:33
You’ve got to put your passport in and then you’ve got to put your 2 thumbs on the on the pad. And then it prints you out a little white ticket and off you go out the smart gate after that. And you’ve got to show this little white ticket, though, when you go through customs on your way out to prove that you’ve logged into the country.
Anders
39:51
Well, I guess there are countries where, because I’m thinking in terms of speed and going through immigration and just getting out on the other side and start enjoying your travel. Because immigration and airport security is really just such a stressful struggle really. So if modern technology can actually kind of ease that burden that would that would be a nice bonus but I’m not sure it’s in any in every country’s interest to actually ease the stress
Mark
40:26
it would be great because like Australia being an island We have pretty tight customs and biosecurity laws. But 1 of the things that I find really frustrating about Australia is that you still have to fill out your customs declaration on the plane on a paper card.
Anders
40:42
Oh yes, I remember.
Mark
40:46
I was just actually reading about this today. They’ve just actually started trialing the digital version and it’s going to be trialed starting next week on flights from Auckland to Brisbane with Qantas. And then hopefully they’re going to look at rolling it out everywhere in the next 12 months because there’s nothing worse than getting into the airport after a long flight and for Australians like most of us are flying from the other side of the world 20 odd hours and having to stop at this desk, fill out a card with all your information on it to hand in, you go, just let me out.
Mark
41:18
Yes.
Anders
41:19
At that point, at that point you just, you can’t be bothered with that.
Mark
41:24
No, not at all. Yeah. And see, sometimes some airlines are good.
Mark
41:29
Some airlines give them out on the plane so you can actually fill them in a couple of hours before you arrive. And that’s that’s okay. But filling out forms is still not ideal on a plane at the best of times. But yeah, but it’s even worse when you’ve got to stop and stop and do them.
Mark
41:42
So actually, when we came back from China only 2 months ago, 6 weeks ago. The airline didn’t hand them out. So that was a real pill because we’d been on the plane, not that long, still 12 hours from Beijing to Melbourne, nonstop. So we actually grabbed a handful of them when we were in the airport so we can pre-fill some out next time we go overseas and have them in our bag so then we can just sign them and put the date on them when we’re coming through next time instead of having to stop and do this on a desk where you’re fighting with 400 other people who are coming off a plane for a little bit of room and a pen to fill this information in.
Anders
42:22
Yeah, it’s the bureaucracy, governmental bureaucracy at the borders are absolutely horrific. And you would think in this day and age that, you know, constantly you hear about people being being supervised and, and big brother is always watching you no matter what you do. I mean, you would think that you could also use this to your advantage.
Anders
42:53
But it’s just, it’s just not how it works.
Mark
42:58
Some airports are, all airports are not created even, that’s for sure. And, security is no,
Anders
43:05
and that’s another frustrating thing because they are not, excess executing the same rules. I mean, it’s, you have 1 thing at Melbourne airport, another thing at Munich, and they will say, well, Munich have more advanced scanners than you in scanning your luggage. And that may all be true, but still, you know, It sort of just creates an illusion of security.
Anders
43:34
It’s, I mean, if you have, if you are of a, if you have a sinister intent, if you really want to do harm to other people, I guess you can do it no matter what. But it’s just…
Mark
43:52
Like this is overkill? What really frustrates me in some airports is that you’ll go in initially and you’ll have to scan your bags and, you know, show your ticket and then they let you into the area where you’ve actually then got to check your bag in if you’re checking a bag under a plane. But then you’ll go to the boarding gate and then some airports in Asia actually have a scanner all over again.
Mark
44:21
Well haven’t I just checked into a security area? Like you scan my bag once, how am I gonna pass a get a bomb or something into my bag within the space of this security area again like in the time it’s taken me that I’m standing around here before I go and check into my next flight and that frustrates me everywhere because a lot of international flights are the same like if you go from say Australia to Europe and you’ve got to stop at like
Anders
44:46
Doha in Qatar or
Mark
44:48
somewhere like that. You’ve got to scan your bags and check in all over again, like, not your big bag, not if you’ve checked it underneath, but you should carry on like you’d, you know, I’ll scan it once, like can’t they just put a tag on them or a bot, you know, and go, okay, why do we have to scan it again? You know,
Anders
45:07
well, it’s, it’s, it’s, I agree. I agree. And you scan in, in security and you could enter the, AAA secured area.
Anders
45:15
Yeah. The thing about that is that once you’re in there, you can order a steak in the restaurant. Oh, that’s it. Just take the steak knife with you on board.
Anders
45:25
I mean, but I always say, you know, that There’s a lot of business in this because they make sure that you cannot take your bottle of water. You cannot take any beverage. You have to buy it in the airport terminal. And it’s good money.
Anders
45:45
So, yeah, we will cover this. Dear listener, we will cover this later on. I’ve got
Mark
45:50
so many grumps. I could go on forever.
Anders
45:54
This is a, this is an episode in itself. This annoys me. Yeah.
Anders
45:59
Though, but yeah,
Mark
46:00
as I’ve got, As I’ve got older, it annoys me even more than it did when I was younger.
Anders
46:05
Yeah, I mean, even when you were younger, back in our day, 25 years ago, it wasn’t that crazy with 9-11. Obviously, security is a different thing. And I can sort of understand that for a lot of reasons.
Anders
46:25
I’m not saying security is a hoax completely, but there’s a lot of things there that, you know, come on, use technology, make sure it’s as easy for for the travelers as at all possible
Mark
46:37
possible yeah
Anders
46:39
but I don’t think the authorities really care about that and and frankly sometimes I think they make they make it hard for you to, as a traveler, make an extra effort. I don’t know, but it’s just…
Mark
46:53
And I carry a lot of camera gear and stuff when we go traveling, obviously. For people who don’t know, me and my wife run a few different travel websites I’m always carrying a laptop and a drone possibly and you know other cameras And I have to pull them out nearly every time I go through somewhere like especially the laptop even though I must admit last time in Australia they’ve now lapsed that you don’t have to pull the laptop out of the bag Same in Munich now Yeah, and but in other countries you still certainly have to and some countries even go to the extreme like when we were in when we were in China you You have aerosol could have deodorant or anything. I’m not sure whether that’s normal.
Mark
47:36
I don’t carry deodorant, so I’m not quite sure. But you couldn’t take aerosol on the plane. And my sister, she had a power bank that they confiscated too because it didn’t meet some sort of standard. So yeah, different countries, different strokes for different folks, I guess, but hey, if you wanna go to their countries, that’s what
Anders
47:54
you gotta deal with, didn’t it? Even in the same country, I mean, Munich and Frankfurt, They don’t have the same procedures. I mean, to begin with, when you had, for instance, I don’t know if that’s the case in Australia as well, but you have to, in a sealed plastic bag, you have to put in, if you have carry-on, In your carry-on, if you have any toiletries like toothpaste and a deodorant and whatever, you have to put it in a sealed transparent plastic bag.
Anders
48:28
And the standards for these plastic bags are not the same in each airport in Germany. So even within the same country, it’s just, you know, there are different and obviously they will charge you a euro to get for the right plastic bag.
Mark
48:45
Yeah, I’m sure they will. Definitely.
Anders
48:48
Just to say, you know, there’s business in this as well.
Mark
48:54
Frankfurt, that’s a nightmare, that airport. We weren’t going to that tonight.
Anders
49:01
Anyways, dear listener, we hope you have enjoyed this first episode of Southern Summers and Northern Winters. We intend to do this on a regular basis when time allows. When time allows, Marc and I will hook up on a call and chat about these things.
Anders
49:23
And we will also be, we have a Facebook page. You can find us.
Mark
49:28
We do. We have a Facebook page called Southern summers and Northern winters podcast. And we also have an Instagram channel called the same thing.
Mark
49:38
I haven’t published much on either of them yet. But once we get this episode aired and put out, then I will take some snippets and some things like that from it and put a few infographics from things we say and we’ll see some content on there and maybe Anders will take some pictures when he’s away on holidays next week. Oh yeah,
Anders
50:00
I forgot to mention.
Mark
50:01
We can put on there.
Anders
50:03
Already next week 1 of us is traveling. I’m going to Vienna in Austria with my family. It’s in a 5 hour train drive from from Munich.
Anders
50:14
But yeah, yeah. So most definitely I will. Yeah, I’ve got like
Mark
50:23
2 billion travel photos floating around. So yeah, so we’ve both got travel plans and this is going there. I haven’t got any until December, but I’m going to China and to Thailand.
Mark
50:35
So I’m actually hoping that we can even do a show while I’m in China possibly.
Anders
50:39
That would be nice. And even in Thailand. Yeah, if you could hook up with a skyline in the background.
Mark
50:47
Yeah, that’s it. We’ll see what happens. We might be able to do some over there.
Mark
50:51
And I’ve got an 18 year old daughter, 19 year old daughter that lives in China. So if that’s of any interest, maybe we can hook her in.
Anders
50:57
Oh, that would be nice.
Mark
50:58
To do a podcast with us and ask her about what life is like in China for a 19 year old Western redhead girl with pale skin that lives in China.
Anders
51:09
Yeah, your daughter is on your travel blog and on your social media. You’ve already posted some content and and I could only imagine I mean like She’s she looks very Western in in that context And I think we even mentioned that you know the area in China where she is is Mostly just Asians
Mark
51:36
Yep, so we’ll I’ll try and tee her up and then December when they’re in China We’ll try and do a do a podcast episode from China
Anders
51:44
You that we should feature her
Mark
51:45
and we can ask us some telling questions about what life’s like in China.
Anders
51:50
Absolutely. It’s actually a very good example of what we started to talk about, you know, raising your kids up and Willow is really a world citizen. I met her a couple of times and it’s just really, you know, you can tell that she has world experience and that’s just…
Mark
52:10
She moves straight out of home at age 18 and straight to China. So from a 4, 000, a town of 4, 000 people to a city of 10 million people bang yeah but we can we can do a whole episode on that when she’s when she’s with us and we’ll yeah so we should be able to I should be able to line that up when we’re in china I think
Anders
52:26
it’ll be interesting you know to follow in the years to come where where she will go you know this is really
Mark
52:33
well yeah she was only going for 6 months, but yeah, that’s going to be extended. So, yeah, there’s a whole whole lot to go on there. Yeah.
Mark
52:40
But we’ll say anyway.
Anders
52:41
Yes, yes, we will. So thank you very much for joining us. If you have any questions and anything you would like us to cover in this podcast series, please do write us, say hello, just get in touch.
Anders
52:58
We would love to hear from you and we would also love from anywhere. Just send us your greetings and tell us where you live and we will make sure.
Mark
53:08
As you can tell me and Anders love talking about travel so we’re happy to talk about travel with anyone so
Anders
53:13
exactly drop
Mark
53:14
us a comment and we will say hello have a chat about whatever you want us to chat about. But when Anders publishes this podcast, you’ll leave the links in the show notes for our YouTube and our Instagram and our Facebook.
Anders
53:30
Yes, exactly. For now, we could even discuss a YouTube because this is a Zoom call. We’re actually recording this.
Anders
53:36
But then you have to think about your appearance there as well. So right now we just talk. This is it.
Mark
53:43
I’d have to get a white screen to put behind me.
Anders
53:47
Nice background and everything. Like you do.
Mark
53:49
Yeah, we could be a background everywhere, couldn’t we?
Anders
53:53
It’s all to come. We’ll see. It’s an
Mark
53:57
exciting start.
Anders
54:00
Yes, exactly. Thank you very much for joining us, and we’ll be back soon. Bye!
Anders
54:06
We will. Bye! Bye!
We hope you enjoyed Episode 1, and please come back for more of Southen Summers and Northern Winters Podcast.
Mark and Anders
The Team
