Episode 7 Transcript

Mark
00:00 – 00:23
Not spent a Day on the website on websites. I should say not just 1. Yeah, I in around on YouTube Nearly hit my monetarization on YouTube. I’m only 20 hours away. So I should get that maybe overnight actually before I hit 4000 watch hours for the year, which is when I can start placing ads on and

Anders
00:30 – 00:41
that’s cool. That’s cool. And, and, And how much, how much untapped potential is there to gain from a YouTube monetization?

Mark
00:41 – 00:45
Well, this is the good thing. Actually, I have no idea what

Anders
00:45 – 00:45
it is.

Mark
00:46 – 01:39
I guess until the first month or the second month or so So yeah, I really yeah, I’ve really got no idea what they pay and what they’re what they’re what their return is So it’ll be interesting to it’ll be interesting to say I Shouldn’t be a learning curve. I’m probably gonna have to go back through all my videos and Reinsert or just take the advertising I guess so yeah, I think there’s 2 ways you can place them yourself or YouTube We’ll place them automatically for you so, you know, it starts off like the 1 where you have the five-second and obviously at the start before the Before it plays Yeah, they play some I guess in between so so yeah, it’s a little bit of a mystery to me, but 3980 watch hours, But I think in the last in this month, I’m averaging over 1000 watch hours.

Mark
01:39 – 01:48
So which is, which is really good. China videos seem pretty popular. So they’re doing business for me.

Anders
01:48 – 02:14
That’s great. That’s, That’s really cool. I’m excited to hear about this because, you know, you always hear about, oh, these great YouTubers, it’s a great place to be and it is. But I don’t know anyone personally who have a big enough channel to actually generate some income. So

Mark
02:15 – 02:37
I don’t know anyone either. So it’ll all be a learning curve. I’d like to say it’ll generate a lot, but yeah, I’m not, I don’t know. Like I put a fair bit of time into it these days and you know, it takes me a long time to make a video, you know, Multiple days, you know, so, so I’m hoping it pays out something that’s, that’s reasonable. So, you know,

Anders
02:38 – 03:31
for a while I was following this, this YouTube vlogger, Casey Neistat, he lives in New York, and, and he would, this is, this is years back now. Yep. For 3 years in a row, daily, he would, he would post a daily vlog. I mean for over a thousand days in a row he would do this and it would always be something interesting and it would always be cinematography that was good, top class really. He’s really talented but I mean as he said Because he stopped at some point because he said I couldn’t keep it up because it takes so much time to to edit the videos and I mean it it became kind of a habit for him to always you know have his camera with him and find interesting

Mark
03:31 – 03:34
to make Good edits it would take that time.

Anders
03:34 – 03:35
Yes

Mark
03:35 – 03:53
If you’re fascinating enough to sit down in front of the camera and be able to talk this for 5 minutes straight in the same position, then you’re probably okay. Or 10 minutes, and you could probably overlay some nice images and stuff like that, but, you know, that’s only going to keep people interested for, for so long, I assume.

Anders
03:53 – 04:18
Yeah, exactly. And also, because he was asked many times, you know, why don’t you just outsource the editing? I said, no, that’s, that’s the editing is actually the, the, that’s where the, the, the edge and nerve lies for him. He, the way he cuts things and, and, and he said, I can’t delegate that. That’s it’s who I am. It’s it’s,

Mark
04:18 – 04:45
Well, if you watch a lot of YouTubers or ones that talk about their workflow, the first thing they reckon they do is outsource the editing. But I don’t know if you’d ever be happy having someone else edit for you, would you? I mean, that’s, that’s, you know, that’s the most, the per or not the most personal part, but that’s, it is really, that’s your, that’s your part of you portray, you know, what you like or what you think.

Anders
04:45 – 04:47
That’s why you put your mark. Yeah,

Mark
04:48 – 05:24
exactly. Someone else is doing it. How are they to How are they to know? I mean, I guess I could watch a number of your videos and you know, you can probably do the first 10, 15, 20. Yeah. With them, I guess to give them an idea of, of what you want and how you want it. But, but yeah, I can’t imagine though it would save you a lot of time. Like, but 3 or 4 editors, because he’d be out there making movies all the time, like pumping them out, but then you’d have to, you know, I’m still making clips from, from footage I’ve got from when I was in China 3 months ago I can only I only have time to make 11A week.

Mark
05:24 – 06:00
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yes. I’ve still got probably 2 or 3 I can make from September When we’re in when we’re in China and I’m about to get back to China. So I’m gonna I’m starting to feel a little bit China centric. Maybe everything I’m making is is about China, but I’ve not run out of footage yet. So I go. Well, I’ve really got anything else to do I’ve got some Melbourne stuff I could make, but it’s either Melbourne or China. So hence why I’m looking actually forward to going to Bangkok to get some different footage from somewhere else I can actually make some clips of instead of just China and Melbourne at this stage.

Mark
06:00 – 06:01
So yeah.

Anders
06:02 – 06:17
Yeah, it does take time. You know, it’s people, just the casual YouTube watcher, they probably don’t realize how much, if you have like a 10 minute YouTube video that’s probably taking you 10 hours.

Mark
06:19 – 06:25
The 45 minute 1 I made, I reckon, I reckon I would have put in 30 or 40 hours.

Anders
06:25 – 06:26
Yeah. There you go.

Mark
06:26 – 06:59
Into making that. And in the end I was so overwhelmed with it that I chopped it into 4 parts. Like I made about 4 10 10-minute movies and put it together that way because the timeline on the editor was, was looking like strings of spaghetti. Like there was cuts and bits and pieces everywhere where I was trying to put in music and fades and all this sort of stuff. And I went, I can’t do it because every time I touch something there, it would affect something down there. So I was like, okay, just make 10 minutes and then cut that and produce that bit and then make another 10.

Mark
06:59 – 07:01
And then at the end, we’ll get 4 clips and we’ll just

Anders
07:02 – 07:02
put them

Mark
07:02 – 07:07
together that way. Yeah. Because that’s the easiest way to go about it in the end. So, yeah.

Anders
07:07 – 07:53
You know, it’s a little bit the same thing within the music industry, because I make music and you get your own sound. Probably your favourite bands, they tend to work with the same producer, the same engineer because they know what they want and this producer, this engineer can generate that sound. Many of the most famous bands, they, every once in a while, they shake things up and will try working with others. But I’ve heard many saying, you know, our favourite producer, we, we, we, we stick to that because that, that, that is where we, we, we, we have.

Anders
07:53 – 07:55
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mark
07:55 – 08:15
And you wonder why then they go to someone else, like whether there’s an issue or which side of it is, or whether, I specifically think about this when I think about ACDC because the 2 best albums are Highway to hell and Back in black And Mutt Lang produced them both but has never produced another album for ACDC since yeah, why why is that? Why did why did that stop?

Anders
08:15 – 08:15
Yeah, and

Mark
08:15 – 08:22
he was when they were prolific at that stage. Yeah You know most of the songs people know probably come from them 2 albums like

Anders
08:22 – 08:23
exactly

Mark
08:23 – 08:25
like yeah, and what happened?

Anders
08:26 – 08:46
You know that there are though in in the in the music industry in the in the in the entertainment industry in general There’s a there are lots of egos and and I could imagine, you know Mutt Lang and and the ACDC people, you know, there would obviously be egos there. So maybe there was a clash. Eventually.

Mark
08:46 – 08:57
I mean, it didn’t stop him. He obviously went on to produce a lot of good stuff, you know. Yeah. And then he married Shania Twain and the only 2 real hit albums she had was while she was married to him.

Anders
08:57 – 09:05
Exactly. 1 of my favorite albums of all time is Def Leppard’s Hysteria. Yes. That’s him. Yeah.

Mark
09:06 – 09:12
I went and seen Def Leppard last year in Melbourne in December.

Anders
09:13 – 09:14
They were still quite good.

Mark
09:14 – 09:30
It was a little bit off putting. Joey Elliot’s obviously old as the hills. He’s got long, long gray hair and you know, like this showman’s coat, these red sparkly sequences sort of thing. And I’m like, but Hey, look, he, he sounded okay.

Anders
09:34 – 09:42
Yeah. Yeah. Did you. Okay. There you go. Yeah. Now I can hear you again. Yeah, I

Mark
09:42 – 09:51
think I lent on the lent on the cord here because it’s connected to my USB. It’s all over the place. There we go. Yeah. Now we’re going to try and stay still.

Anders
09:54 – 10:03
All right. Let’s just make the introduction. Yes. I’ve recorded for a while now, but maybe you can use this for extra clips.

Mark
10:03 – 10:04
And yeah, definitely.

Anders
10:04 – 10:20
I enjoy when you do that. This is this is always fun to watch. Yeah. All right. Hello, everybody. And welcome to yet another episode of northern winters, southern summers and northern winters, or is it the other way around?

Mark
10:23 – 10:28
Well, I guess it’s summer in the north at some stage and winter in the south at some stage.

Anders
10:28 – 10:33
Exactly. Hi Mark, how are you today? How are you this Monday?

Mark
10:33 – 10:49
I’m very good Anders, had a day off today, did a bit of computer work, did a bit of housework, had to go and pick out some new vinyl for the kitchen. So yeah, been a rather, I was going to say fulfilling day, but not really, just another day.

Anders
10:50 – 10:55
It’s nice when you have some upgrades to the house, isn’t it? I mean, I always love that.

Mark
10:56 – 11:15
It is. So now it’s just a matter of picking some colors, which I’ll leave to my wife because it’s more important for her to like it than it is for me to like it. I said, I need the floor. I’ll just look down on it when I mop it and sweep it while you’re at work and I’m on my day off. So, you know, that’s, that’s the main thing. Happy wife, happy life. They say so.

Anders
11:15 – 11:22
Yeah, that is true. Who, who, You said it was in the kitchen that you’re doing this?

Mark
11:23 – 12:03
Yeah. Yeah. I had an insurance claim, our dishwasher leaked and it went down the back of 1 of the kitchen cupboards. So you ring the insurance company and they want to replace everything, you know, flooring, a couple of the cupboards, the kickboards on the bottom of the cupboards and things like that. There’s a little bit of swelling on the bottom, but I can’t say much damage, But who’s to say that within 6 months, it’s not all swelling and all moldy underneath where the water went. But, so yeah, so we’ve got to replace some cupboards and some flooring and some boards and things like that come, I think, end of January, start of February at some stage when they all get back from holidays.

Anders
12:03 – 12:04
So yeah, yeah.

Mark
12:04 – 12:25
Yes. I had to go pick out the vinyl today to go in the kitchen floor, which is handy because the vinyl that’s on the kitchen floor was there before we bought the house and we’ve had this house for 20 years. So it’s probably 30 years old. So it’s a, it was a good, good opportunity to, to update it a bit. At the same time, the insurance company were pretty quick to up the price on my policy though, straight away.

Anders
12:25 – 12:27
Of course they were

Mark
12:27 – 12:28
as they do. So, you know,

Anders
12:30 – 12:37
naturally. And who’s, who’s, who’s doing most work in the kitchen? Are you a cook or your wife?

Mark
12:39 – 13:00
We probably both take interns, but I probably cook more and I’ve always cooked more. I enjoy cooking and just quietly between me and you and no 1 else that’s listening. I wasn’t a huge fan of my wife’s cooking early on. So I used to cook. So most of the times, but now she’s a, now she’s a good cook.

Anders
13:00 – 13:43
So, Yeah, I’ve learned the same in my marriage. My wife’s an excellent cook and enjoys it very much. Very passionate cook. And you know, as the years go by, you sort of learn your little things here and there from watching and being told what to help out with in the kitchen. So it’s yeah, I’ve learned a few things as well. So now I actually enjoy it. And during the week, my wife’s away in the office most days during the week. So she comes home late and I enjoy, you know, having cooked and to be ready when she comes home.

Anders
13:44 – 13:51
So it’s, yeah, you find your little routines. And yeah, That’s 1

Mark
13:51 – 14:15
of the ways we organize it. Whoever’s Whoever’s home earliest on that day is the 1 that that does the cooking? Yeah Normally in my wife’s favor to do less cooking. I’m home earlier more days than she is. But hey, it works out. And some days, it’s easy to cook spaghetti other days. Something more, if you’ve got more time, things like that.

Anders
14:18 – 14:45
It doesn’t have to be fancy at all. I mean, we should actually talk about this because there are countries with better food than others, I guess you can say. I don’t know. We both travel a lot. Is there a specific country where you’d say that the kitchen in this country is particularly good?

Mark
14:45 – 15:03
I have a couple of standout cuisines that I really enjoy. I would have to say Vietmanese is probably 1 of my very, very favorite cuisines in the world.

Anders
15:03 – 15:05
I agree. Yeah, absolutely.

Mark
15:05 – 15:29
Everything from pho, from the soups they make, to the bánh mì, which is the crusty French rolls that they fill with different meats and pâtés, all the way to the rice paper rolls and the bun cha and lots of different things like that that they make. I find Vietmanese is it tastes really fresh and it feels really fresh all the time when you eat it.

Anders
15:29 – 15:30
It does.

Mark
15:30 – 15:35
Oh yeah so Vietnamese is probably my standout cuisine.

Anders
15:36 – 15:55
And it’s always so, like you say, fresh, but it’s so green and crisp. And I mean, these rice paper rolls, I mean, with all the herbal leaves and everything, I think it’s basil or…

Mark
15:55 – 15:56
The lemongrass,

Anders
15:56 – 16:01
the coriander. Yeah, the coriander. It’s so nice. Wow. I mean, it

Mark
16:01 – 16:21
tastes very, very fresh. I have a default favourite cuisine, which would be Indian. So, you can’t go wrong. There’s plenty of nice and good Indian dishes You can find anywhere like butter chicken and tikka masala and yeah Good bit of rice and some naan bread that you can dip away at some of these fantastic sauces.

Anders
16:21 – 16:23
It’s very fulfilling as well.

Mark
16:23 – 16:39
Yeah. It is. But I’m also a huge, huge fan of cuisine from your area of the world. I like German, Polish, Czech food, like food that’s very meaty and very carbohydrate rich, I guess.

Anders
16:39 – 17:10
Yeah. The central European dishes. I mean, like, like a good goulash. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, It’s meat, minced meat or no, not minced meat, chopped meat. And it has a paprika sauce to it and these dumplings or potatoes or whatever you can. Potato pancake in Poland.

Mark
17:10 – 17:29
It’s always served on a potato pancake. Fantastic. Every time I go to Poland, it’s right on my list straight away. Yeah. A plate of goulash with a potato pancake. Hence, whenever I go to Bavaria, a pork knuckle with sauerkraut or potato salad, you know, is always right on my list as well.

Anders
17:29 – 17:46
But you are right. It’s, it’s, it’s extremely heavy. I mean, on a hot summer’s day, you just can’t, you just can’t eat it. It’s just, it’s a winter hearty food. Yeah. Absolutely. I

Mark
17:46 – 17:47
am of my

Anders
17:48 – 18:29
standouts. I’m absolutely in favor of Italian food. I mean, you just mentioned spaghetti earlier. And what I find fascinating about Italian food is that it does not have to be very, very elaborate, you can use just a few ingredients really just cook some some spaghetti, cook it properly, obviously, and then just good olive oil and some chopped herbal leaves or something like that. Like sage, yeah. Sage. Sage. Or basil, or just

Mark
18:29 – 18:30
some. Oregano.

Anders
18:31 – 19:06
Oregano. Or some tomatoes. It’s really just that. And then obviously, a lot of freshly grinded Parmesan cheese. That’s really all there is to it. And it’s in days when things are a little bit hectic here at home, and we don’t really know what to cook, we can always go to the basement and just haul up some pasta and cook it and we within 10-15 minutes we have a good meal.

Mark
19:07 – 19:09
Are you a fan of the pizza?

Anders
19:09 – 19:16
Yes I am a fan of the pizza and in fact we have a pizza oven outside on the terrace.

Mark
19:19 – 19:23
What’s your go-to toppings on the pizza?

Anders
19:23 – 20:25
Oh, well, also, actually, I tend to keep it simple, just a tomato, good tomato sauce, which my wife cooks to perfection and it’s, you know, it just broods for hours on the stove. But then really just some some mozzarella cheese and some some basil. But I 1 thing 1 sort that I really like is the pizza bianco. It’s a new, maybe it’s not new, but something new to us really. They started instead of the tomato sauce, they make a ricotta cheese sort of foundation on top of the dough, obviously. And then And then you put thin slices of potato on it and thyme.

Anders
20:27 – 20:37
And then you have a pizza bianco with patate, potato. That’s very delicious.

Mark
20:37 – 20:45
Sounds very, very interesting. Yeah. Now the million dollar question is, does pineapple belong on pizza?

Anders
20:45 – 21:26
No, yes. No, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. And I have no idea who, I asked an Italian this question, because some people say that the Italians started this thing. But the Italians I have asked, they there’s no, are you crazy? This was the Americans who started that. But I don’t know. And, and, and in addition to that question, Mark, I also have, we also have the debate here in Europe, corn, you know, corn on pizza, does that belong on pizza? I would

Mark
21:27 – 21:55
say no, but I could eat corn on a pizza. It wouldn’t bother me, but it wouldn’t be something I would, well, another question about corn. I’ve been to Asia. Does corn belong in ice cream? Because I’ve had corn in ice cream because corn is sweet by nature. So it’s a sweet, a sweet corn and ice cream is sweet. Ice cream is usually sometimes coconut ice cream. So I’ve had sweet corn on ice cream before in Asia.

Anders
21:56 – 22:28
I’ve never had it, but why not? You know, There are variations or ingredients in different variations where you as a Westerner, you think this sounds strange, but If you go to Asia, they, they, you know, this, they spice things up. They, they mix things in, in, in different ways that, so why not? Why not corn in, in, in ice cream? Yeah.

Mark
22:28 – 23:00
Well, why not corn on pizza too, I guess. 1 thing I guess, about pizza from your part of the world is I would call it minimalistic, I guess, compared to what Australians and maybe Americans have on pizza, which I like pizza minimalistic your way, because we would have maybe 5 or 6 or 7 toppings on a pizza over here, like where the toppings is twice as thick as what the base is sometimes. I think less can be more sometimes and more should be less.

Anders
23:00 – 23:42
That is the Italian approach to most dishes. Yeah, because the ingredients are, you know, made to perfection. They have the best tomatoes, they have the best herbs, they have Stuff like that, you know, the Italians are really good. So they tend to deal with all the ingredients with some amount of respect for the original taste in the ingredient. And I think if you mix things too much, then yeah, there’s a tendency that it just, well, it will certainly make you full, but will it really taste better?

Mark
23:42 – 24:11
I think there’s a tendency in Australia, I’m not quite sure about America too, to put anything you want on a pizza and make whatever you can. Like I’ve had a hot dog pizza where there’s bits of hot dogs chopped up and you know onion and mustard and cheese and sauce you know to make it like a like a hot dog you know you would find but but on a pizza you know and a cheeseburger pizza you know there’s always anything that they can they can put on a pizza sometimes in Australia. They will Hence, it’s probably why I’m not a big Pizza fan in Australia.

Mark
24:11 – 24:21
I find the crust is you can’t get thin crust Which is what I like because yeah, so filling but most of the crusts are you know that American style really deep deep crust.

Anders
24:21 – 24:21
Deep pan.

Mark
24:21 – 24:27
Yeah where that sort of fills you up and all you can taste taste is the crust like eating you know it’s like in a sandwich I guess.

Anders
24:27 – 24:28
Yeah. Lots of

Mark
24:28 – 25:00
you know it’s really doughy and filling so so yeah I’m I’m not a huge pizza person I eat pizza when it’s You know when we go somewhere, but I would very rarely order pizza It’s not 1 of them things where I go. I haven’t had a pizza for a long time. I need to order 1. Yeah Not my It’s not my go-to as a takeaway like a lot of people like in Australia. But yeah, the pizza’s nice, but it’s not my thing. But I do appreciate a good pizza when I actually

Anders
25:00 – 25:27
have 1. This will be on the menu next time you and the family come visit, which I hope you will. And, and Alex, my wife, she will, she will prepare the dough and everything, you know, days in advance so that it can, you know, raise and, you know, the, the yeast can can do its work. And it’s, it’s an art really.

Mark
25:27 – 25:28
Yeah.

Anders
25:30 – 25:46
I didn’t appreciate this earlier on before we got the pizza oven that you know, a good pizza baker is actually, that’s art. That’s really art. I’ve got a

Mark
25:46 – 25:47
bird flying around in my shed.

Anders
25:47 – 25:50
Hey, yeah, I saw something fly by.

Mark
25:51 – 25:56
I’ve got a pigeon flying around. Okay, he can sit there for a minute and I’ll deal with him.

Anders
26:02 – 26:04
This is live action going on here in the podcast.

Mark
26:05 – 26:11
Behind me up on a box on top of a cupboard. So that’ll be interesting later to try and get him.

Anders
26:12 – 26:14
Did you leave the door open?

Mark
26:14 – 26:38
I did leave the door open in my shed because it’s not, it’s not cold. So, but I’ll try and open the curtains after when I finish here and hopefully he might fly back Yeah, I don’t mind why if he’s sitting up there and he’s not flying around my head Not too bad, so that threw me off so You’re you’re a man that loves all things Italian, aren’t you?

Anders
26:38 – 26:39
Yes, I am. I am.

Mark
26:39 – 26:42
Your favorite. So what do you put that down to?

Anders
26:43 – 27:53
Well, the, the, the relaxed lifestyle, I guess they have this, they, well, I know from, from, from many people I know in Italy, they say, you know, well, politically and I guess government wise, it’s things are very complicated and and but but they have this relaxed way of seeing things, at least to what I’ve experienced in Italy. It’s just, you know, what we don’t make today we can do tomorrow. Let’s just enjoy, let’s just relax a little bit. So they have this laid-back approach and that suits me really well. I guess the food obviously, and then I’ve just had many many great travel experiences in Italy so it’s a beautiful country if you have never been to Italy you should certainly put that on your bucket list it’s it’s just it’s just to It’s just, it’s just, to me, it’s almost like paradise on earth.

Anders
27:54 – 27:55
It’s a little bit.

Mark
27:55 – 28:01
Do you have a like a favorite city or a favorite? Yeah, you go to in

Anders
28:01 – 28:17
the region Tuscany is where we’ve been the most. There’s a city called Lucca which is in the Pisa area. People familiar with the Leaning Tower of Pisa will

Mark
28:17 – 28:18
have laid eyes on that.

Anders
28:18 – 29:35
Yeah, exactly. So, and we have a small hotel in buildings, in medieval buildings actually, dating back to, I don’t know, 1300, 1400. There’s a hotel and I’ve been coming there for 25, 30 years. And it’s just very central to whatever we want to see in Tuscany and it’s still in the country so it’s peaceful and quiet. And the only thing you hear when you lie by the pool in the sun relaxing is some gardener snipping the hedges or a dog barking in the distance or something like that. So that’s the whole, you just, it’s so healing for your soul to go there because there’s some kind of originality, You feel so connected with the times because it seems unchanged through centuries that you just, okay, you enter this medieval city, this medieval area here, and it’s just nothing.

Anders
29:35 – 30:04
It’s as if nothing has happened for centuries. And that has a healing effect on me, because in the hectic everyday environment that we normally find ourselves in, you know, you can, you can get stressed and you, you think it’s all so fast and then almost everything stands still when you, when you go down to Tuscany, go down to Italy. So, So I really enjoy that. Is the bird still flying?

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Mark
30:05 – 30:14
The bird’s still behind me on a box on top of the cupboard. So I’m just checking to make sure he’s still there. I’ve got a real hankering to go to Sicily.

Anders
30:15 – 30:16
Yeah. Have you

Mark
30:16 – 30:17
ever been to Sicily?

Anders
30:17 – 30:34
No, I haven’t been to Sicily, but, I’ve seen lots of, of, of film footage from Sicily. It’s, it’s very, very beautiful and they have the best, lemons in the world. According to them.

Mark
30:35 – 30:44
These sort of places would be quite nice to visit, I think. Yeah. It’s high on my list of places to go.

Anders
30:45 – 31:08
It is 1 of the nearest countries for us to go because in southern Germany we can literally be in Italy particularly in northern Italy within 3 hours and it’s just We like to go hiking in Northern Italy. It’s just on the other side of the Alps before it slows down.

Mark
31:08 – 31:11
You have to go through… Italy doesn’t border Germany, does it?

Anders
31:11 – 31:13
No, it doesn’t. No, we have to go

Mark
31:13 – 31:15
through Austria.

Anders
31:17 – 31:52
But really, just Austria is just like 45 minutes drive through in that particular part of Austria. So it’s just a corner of Austria that you’re crossing. But you are crossing Austria enough to have to pay the full autobahn fee. Obviously. Yes. And you’re going through the Brenner Pass, mountain pass, that alone will set you back like 10, 12 euros, just that stretch. So yeah.

Mark
31:53 – 32:36
It’s like I’ve driven, I’ve driven and I’ve driven with someone a few times across the Czech Republic and they’re very notorious for their their highway fees and their highway passes and tickets and I’ve actually watched a few videos on it and So what the government does the government have a little backhand deal with some operators who are set up their booths their toll booths just over the border from Germany and and from Austria and Make it look like this is where you have to buy your pass These booths they make them look official.

Anders
32:36 – 32:37
Yes,

Mark
32:37 – 33:28
but in retrospect, they’re not they run by a third-party much like if you buy a visa and you don’t go directly to the government you buy for third party And then you pay you know 15% extra and the government in the Czech Republic are well aware of this because they have 1 official ticket machine at the first service station across every border But this little ticket machine the size of an ATM is Tucked around the side of a building. Yeah, so you can’t actually say it but the the ones that they’re getting a kickback from are in plain sight in like a Little building or you know, we can chaos like you would find that at a Christmas market sort of selling yeah selling their passes that are you know 100% markup and people are Not not aware that this is not not real like oh There’s a YouTube guy.

Mark
33:28 – 33:57
I’ll watch him. He’s from Czech Republic and he goes around talking about you know, how all the ripoff schemes and stuff like that that are in Prague and in different places Yeah of the Czech Republic So quite interesting and like I said, I know this for a fact because I’ve actually bought tickets at this kiosk if these kiosks before especially the 1 that goes in from Germany, from the Bavarian side, they’re up above a bit that goes in towards Prague and Pilsen. So yeah, so I’ve seen these in action.

Anders
34:00 – 34:04
So do they charge a different price for the… Yes.

Mark
34:04 – 34:20
Yeah, they charge a different, nearly 100% markup compared to what the official government machine charges. But like I said, the government machine that the government put there is tucked away, so no 1 can really see it. So the government are obviously getting kickbacks off these other companies that are selling

Anders
34:20 – 34:21
Oh, man

Mark
34:21 – 34:38
Telling the passes because they let them put their boost right at the very Entrance or in the car park where everyone can see them But the official machine is sort of tucked around the side of a building, whereas you’d have to go and really, you’d have to go and look for it. And you wouldn’t know that it’s official and the other 1 is actually not.

Anders
34:39 – 35:12
So there’s a whole industry evolving or developing around this. Well, The Austrian vignettes that you have to put in this mark, you have to put in the front. They have the price stamped on them as far as I can remember. So there’s an official price and the service stations that will sell them already here in Germany on your way to the Austrian border, they charge the same. They charge

Mark
35:12 – 35:13
the same.

Anders
35:13 – 35:26
So they probably buy them at a lower cost, I guess, but the official price is the same. So yeah, but 100% markup on these, that sounds crazy.

Mark
35:26 – 36:18
Speaking of toll roads, Melbourne is home to a number of toll roads run by a huge conglomerate called Transurban that runs tolls in Sydney, Brisbane, also in America. So they’re a massive big company and apparently 50% of their profit comes from toll roads in Melbourne because we are 1 of the most overcharged cities in the world so for me to go from My house to the airport and back would cost me 30 dollars Australian so it’s at 18 euros to to go across the city and back Which is probably the space of say 30 kilometers 30 kilometers of tollway each way So 60 probably 60 kilometers in total is about is about 18 euros

Anders
36:19 – 36:52
It’s it’s it’s I’m a little I’m a little at all odds on all sides in terms of toll roads because I can understand and appreciate the need to limit traffic. It’s really a big problem for bigger cities, for metropolitan areas. On the other hand, in Australia, you are really dependent on your car, you know, because of the distances

Mark
36:52 – 37:13
And Melbourne does not have an airport rail link anyway, so you can’t catch a train to the airport 1 of the only Major city, I’m not quite sure if there’s any other cities in the world with 5000000 or more population that’s in a developed country that does not have an Train link to its airport. I’d be very surprised if there’s any other 5000000 plus people.

Anders
37:13 – 37:18
No Yeah, are they working on that I

Mark
37:19 – 37:48
Apparently yes, it’s in the It’s in the pipeline at the moment, but it’s been in the pipeline for the last 10 or 15 years Apparently they’re acquiring Acquiring land and building stations at the moment. So this can happen, but they’re doing a lot of a lot of that They’ve just signed another contract to build more rail Victoria’s the State with the most debt of any state in Australia. I think we’re like 200 billion dollars in debt over budget

Anders
37:48 – 37:49
Oh man, well

Mark
37:49 – 38:15
this which goes back from goes back from covered but we keep we keep building things especially in Melbourne because Melbourne keeps growing and it’s the biggest city in Australia, so Finally they’re finally they’re building a rail link apparently no set date on When it’s gonna happen, it’s not gonna be direct It’s gonna go from the city to 1 other station and then onwards it’s gonna stop So somewhere along the line

Anders
38:15 – 38:15
at

Mark
38:15 – 38:36
some growth corridor so people can can get on first somewhere else and then go there. So at the moment, this is the bus that runs every half an hour. So the bus is not too bad. I think it’s like maybe $20. So it’s probably 12 I think to get back from get to the airport and or get back from the airport. So it’s not too bad.

Anders
38:37 – 39:38
But you know, we have the same thing in Munich. The airport is about 40 kilometers north of the city center. And there’s a train going but not directly. It’s what it does. It does go to the airport. There’s a station at the airport which is the end station. But it as you say it’s same thing like you do in Melbourne, it stops like 10, 15 stops on the way and it takes you from the city centre to the airport, roughly a little under an hour to get there. There’s no like direct express train to the airport, which is even for a city the size of Munich, about 1.5 million inhabitants, I think is on is on heard of, I mean, we should have had this ages ago when they built the airport like 20 years ago, 20, 25 years ago now.

Anders
39:39 – 40:32
They should have thought of this. But you know, there’s a lot of environmentalists and nature habitat, not unions, but people, you know, protecting the habitats for wildlife. I mean, they are against this. And to this day, they’re still I think they have finally gotten the agreements for a third runway here in Munich. I think they’re building it. But that took a long time because of wildlife organizations slowing down the, and I can understand that it is always a heated political debate about, you know, infrastructure, building infrastructure and then protecting wildlife. It’s always this.

Mark
40:34 – 40:58
And the longer they leave these things, like especially in a city like Melbourne, if they’ve got to acquire, you know, land, you know, it’s cost them a fortune to acquire a corridor of land that’s 40 kilometers long. It’s, you know, going from the city out to the outer suburbs of Melbourne. You know, I mean, how many houses is that? I don’t know how much money is that costing them to start off with before.

Anders
40:59 – 41:04
Oh, The bird is flying again. I can see. Okay.

Mark
41:10 – 41:27
So he’s still flying. Yeah. So, so yeah, compulsory acquire land, I guess is a, is a huge, huge part of the cost of all these things. And, you know, in hindsight, if you had done them 50 years ago, but 50 years ago, it still would have been expensive by that time.

Anders
41:28 – 41:28
Yes. To

Mark
41:28 – 41:35
do it, I guess. But yeah, it’s very, I don’t like Melbourne Airport much. It’s probably 1 of my least favourite airports.

Anders
41:35 – 41:36
Do you only have 1 airport

Mark
41:37 – 41:38
in Melbourne? Yes.

Anders
41:39 – 41:44
Really? A city the size of 5 million inhabitants? It’s finishing

Mark
41:44 – 41:46
another runway at the moment.

Anders
41:47 – 41:52
Really? Because it sounds like a little little, I mean, a little too little.

Mark
41:53 – 42:31
Yeah. And Sydney’s is building its second, a second airport at the moment. It’s going to be opened in, I don’t know, 2 years, 18 months, something like that. But most of Sydney has, even though Sydney, even though Melbourne’s now bigger than Sydney Sydney’s, you know I guess is more well known on a world stage So my yeah tend to fly in fly into Sydney and not not so much into Melbourne you know, they then fly to Melbourne domestically from Sydney after that I guess so But yeah, it’s not a it’s not a great airport It’s a it’s a fair way out of the city which most airports are these days because no 1 can build an airport Close to the city anymore.

Mark
42:31 – 42:37
Like I said, there’s no public transport out there parking is the price of parking is atrocious

Anders
42:37 – 42:38
Yeah,

Mark
42:38 – 43:06
not that many great facilities within the airport It takes me an hour to get bags every time I come home, which absolutely Frustrates the yeah So Long the last thing I want to be doing is sitting in an airport waiting for Luggage to come out. But yeah, what happens so I don’t know they’re continually doing upgrades But But yeah, it’s not my favorite airport in the world to travel through I must say. I don’t have much choice.

Anders
43:06 – 43:09
Well, no, you don’t. Not if you

Mark
43:09 – 43:09
want

Anders
43:09 – 43:22
to travel. I mean, I’m just thinking of the city of London or the London metropolitan area. I think there’s about I don’t know how many million inhabitants, but they have like 3 or 4.

Mark
43:23 – 43:26
Gatwick and Luton and Heathrow and

Anders
43:26 – 43:28
Yeah, Gatwick. Yeah.

Mark
43:29 – 43:31
And then that week, I’ve never been to Luton.

Anders
43:31 – 44:01
And they have the City of London airport as well, which is literally on the Thames Bank. Yeah, it’s not very big. I think it only has domestic flights these days. But, but but but still, you know, they have airports. And, and no matter where you are in London, You can always hear a plane

Mark
44:03 – 44:27
Yeah, I can’t say I find into London I think I’ve only find into there like once or twice Can’t even think why I was fine into Manchester a few times, but I think maybe London twice I’ve thrown into Heathrow once but I never got out there. I think I got a connecting flight and I’ve definitely flown into the other 1, into Gatwick a couple

Anders
44:27 – 44:27
of times.

Mark
44:27 – 44:29
It has a direct train line, which was

Anders
44:29 – 44:30
quite good for me. It does, yeah. So

Mark
44:31 – 44:36
you can just go into the city on and that’s what you want is the direct train on.

Anders
44:37 – 45:08
Obviously you will pay. I find it rather costly, to be honest, to the Gatwick Express is is Is is I have no idea what we paid the last time I have an amount like 40 or 50 pounds Yeah for all of us with 3 of us Well 2 adults and Our son was not that old at that time, so I don’t think we even paid for him. But still, it was rather costly. I think that’s

Mark
45:08 – 45:19
how they get you, don’t they? Because they know you’ve got to take this service. I think I remember that. Is Munich costly to get to the airport? I have a hankering memory that it was a little bit expensive for it is

Anders
45:19 – 45:20
it is

Mark
45:20 – 45:21
when we went there

Anders
45:21 – 45:33
Yeah, you can buy an airport tickets Which is a little more a little cheaper, but but yeah, it will set you back to go to the airport around 15 euros

Mark
45:33 – 45:36
a Person or for a group a person

Anders
45:36 – 45:46
a person. Yeah a group ticket off you could buy a foot foot up to 5 people I think for 30 or 35 euros Yeah,

Mark
45:46 – 46:31
I was just about to say that. I reckon I remember that it was about 30 or 35 euros. Yes From that station just near that hotel. We stayed at where we had tea at that Augustine yeah Brow house that night I would have just bought say this is another tourist thing the tourists don’t know. I didn’t know that there was a specific Family ticket and luckily the person at my hotel told me this otherwise I would have bought individual tickets Which would have cost me probably 60 euros Instead of this group ticket, so that’s Saying in a hotel and not necessarily an Airbnb is you have someone to tell you these facts and figures before you make the mistake of overpaying I guess.

Anders
46:32 – 47:13
Well that’s the thing particularly about German machine, vending machines for for train tickets or public transportation tickets. They are so complicated. I mean, even people who has lived here for 25 years, and people who’ve lived here all their lives, they sometimes don’t understand the public transportation, transportation zoning system and the prices and how you why you have to pay an extra fee for that zone and it’s just so complicated I mean if you go to London to the Tube they have these oyster card

Mark
47:14 – 47:14
yeah

Anders
47:14 – 47:21
you just swipe when you go in and you swipe it when you go and you can’t enter or leave the train station without swiping your car.

Mark
47:21 – 47:57
Yeah, Melbourne’s got 1 similar called a mykey, but they’re, I think they’re about, they’re trying to do away with it. And they just want to go to straight tap on with your credit card, like, you know, like you would tap and go just bang but but Melbourne also Victoria for that matter you can’t spend more than $12 a day on public transport that’s the that’s a limit cap yeah you can go anywhere I could go from here to Warrnambool, which is 500 kilometers away, and it would only cost me $12. Because there was some election promise that they had to get more people using trains.

Mark
47:57 – 48:04
So yeah, so the most you can pay, You go on 20 trains and 10 trams in the day if you want to but it’s only gonna cost you $12.

Anders
48:04 – 48:44
Yeah, but to be honest with you, I think it’s this is great. I mean we have the we talked about this in a previous episode the Deutschland ticket which is 50 euros a month going up to 58 euros a month after New Year’s. But still, keep public transportation at a low cost in order to get people in. That’s the only thing that really makes sense, I think. But, so which makes it even harder to understand why it has to cost a fortune to go to the airport. Because obviously the airport trains are run by private companies, so they

Mark
48:44 – 48:56
are not a part of the toll roads. Yes. So they build them, they pay for them, then they can charge you. The government says, well, for the next 20 or 30 years, you can charge the public whatever you want as

Anders
48:56 – 48:56
long as you

Mark
48:56 – 49:01
maintain this and you keep the system running, you replace everything that needs doing.

Anders
49:01 – 49:03
Exactly right. Exactly right.

Mark
49:03 – 49:09
Charge whatever you like and poor suckers out there, they’ll just continue to pay it because they have no other choice.

Anders
49:10 – 49:46
Exactly right. Exactly right. In my native Denmark and Copenhagen, Well, in general, in Denmark, they have been implementing a public transportation ticket system like semi electronic, you have to buy a card and you swipe it when you enter the station and you swipe it when you leave the station. However, you can actually enter and leave the station without doing it. It’s not like in in in London, for instance, you can’t even enter because the slots won’t open for you unless you swipe the card. In Denmark, we

Mark
49:46 – 49:47
don’t have that.

Anders
49:47 – 50:17
Yeah, in Melbourne, we In Denmark, we don’t have these slots. You can actually go, you can enter the train without swiping. And it often happens that people remember to swipe the card when they enter, but they forget when they leave, that the ticket is still like open. And that will allow the companies to keep charging to the maximum amount per day.

Mark
50:17 – 50:18
For that day, yeah.

Anders
50:19 – 50:25
So this is a huge discussion. That’s

Mark
50:25 – 50:31
what happens in Melbourne as well. If you don’t swipe off, you’ll get charged $12. That’s it.

Anders
50:31 – 50:31
At the

Mark
50:31 – 50:40
end of the day, if you swiped on, but you know, you might only have gone, you know, 1 train station that was like $2 really, but if you didn’t swipe it off, it’ll be $12 off your

Anders
50:40 – 50:40
car. Exactly.

Mark
50:40 – 50:42
At the end of that day.

Anders
50:42 – 51:00
But the thing is, you know, it’s a very typical Danish approach to things. You know, they insist on inventing their own system every time something huge and big public has to be Be bought instead of taking off-the-shelf solutions from like London where

Mark
51:00 – 51:08
You just cost them 3 times as much to develop it. And you know, it’s littered with bugs and problems that take another 5 years to work out, you know, and then

Anders
51:08 – 51:17
it’s the same thing every time. And it’s tax, tax money just down the drain, you know. Yeah.

Mark
51:18 – 51:25
Yeah. It’s all, it’s all happening here. We get, yeah. I don’t know. This is,

Anders
51:25 – 51:28
this is a can of worms that we yeah

Mark
51:30 – 52:03
Don’t I don’t listen to the news much on purpose for this whole reason of, like I said, politicians are just in it for themselves and they just fight amongst each other over issues. Even if it’s right, I’ve got to say that you’re wrong, even if I think it’s right. You just go back and forth and no 1 wins. There’s a number of huge debates going on here at the moment about nuclear power and all this sort of stuff Well, they send you know, I’m the government like no No, we want renewables and the opposition like yeah, but nuclear is the cleanest power and the government, but it’s gonna cost too much.

Mark
52:03 – 52:08
And you know, you just go, just build it, other countries use it. That’s my opinion.

Anders
52:09 – 52:46
Yeah, yeah. The thing is, the thing, but you are right, you know, just quickly off topic. I mean, nuclear is clean power and the newer plants, nuclear plants, are actually much safer than the ones that exploded like 30 years ago, 50 years ago. This is a whole new technology. The problem is that building a nuclear power plant will take you 15 years. Because there’s so much technology and so much security and safety that you can’t just decide to do it. And then next year, by this time, you’ll have it. It doesn’t work like that. So it’s, yeah.

Mark
52:46 – 53:09
And just quietly, I think, you know, Australia is 1 of the largest exporters of brown coal in the world. So our government are probably like, yeah, well, you know, we don’t really want to, you know, close that market totally because there’s a lot of tax money coming in From selling brown coal to China and India and all these third world countries that don’t really care too much about the environment.

Anders
53:10 – 53:17
Most likely closer to the truth that you would like to know. Yeah. That’s it. Anyways.

Mark
53:17 – 53:19
All about the dollar, isn’t it?

Anders
53:19 – 53:37
Yeah, It is. You have been listening to Southern Summers and Northern Winters. This was episode 7, I guess. Yeah, wow. And you’re getting even closer to your, your travel day for, Are you home this time next week, Mark?

Mark
53:37 – 53:45
Yes, we will be on next Monday night and then I leave on the Tuesday night to go to Melbourne for the night and Wednesday morning we will be off.

Anders
53:45 – 53:50
All right. So next week we’ll still have you in your shed. We’ll be on. Yep. Hopefully without

Mark
53:50 – 53:59
we might even yeah, hopefully Up on my cupboard and probably leaving his pigeon marks everywhere.

Anders
53:59 – 54:00
Yes

Mark
54:01 – 54:07
So I will chase you back but everyone thanks for tuning in as usual We appreciate everyone that oh,

Anders
54:07 – 54:07
yeah

Mark
54:07 – 54:13
time to listen to me and Anders ramble on about whatever takes our fancy at whatever minute of the podcast is going on.

Anders
54:13 – 54:23
So wherever the conversation goes. Yes. And please do subscribe and, and write us with questions and comments and

Mark
54:23 – 54:24
we’d love a question.

Anders
54:24 – 54:38
Yeah. Tell us where you are in the world. Why, from where are you listening? I mean, we, it’s, it can be anything can be anything. So until next time, have a nice week and take care. Yeah.

Mark
54:38 – 54:39
Bye, everyone. Bye.