My wife and I are living with my mum in the house I grew up in. I only just recently got together enough for a house deposit only because the government job I was working in paid me to stop working. But now I don’t have a job, so I still can’t get a house and I feel like we might be living in poverty if we don’t have one of those when I’ve seriously retired – not just my current state of recently finished up with a couple of decades working for the government.
So, with that in mind, we went on a trip to Eurovision in Vienna!!! – Insert campy scream!! I note that last comment is very stereotypical, as they explained at one of the live Eurovision performances the majority of people who go to Eurovision are straight old boring binary people. We did meet up with our married friends there though both of whom happen to be male (shock).
Yes, going to Eurovision is not going to save us any money. Or let us purchase a home any quicker. Yes, it was financially irresponsible. But, it was Eurovision. In Vienna. And it was one of the f’ing most coolest experiences of my life, in one of the coolest cities in the world! Love you Vienna! And it beat just sitting around worrying about houses.
Naturally we couldn’t just go all the way from Australia (where we live if you’ve ever read any of my other blog posts) to Vienna and just stay in Vienna. We added on a few other countries along the way.
Bangkok for a few nights on the way there and the way back, having a few Thai massages, a Thai ‘marijuana’ joint (aka just a joint), and some delicious pancakes after getting the munchies from that joint, along with a few cold Singhas and some spicy prawn noodles. I feel some freedom now actually saying that I had an actual marijuana joint in Bangkok. When I was in government they made a big deal out of it when I posted a selfie outside a weed shop on Instagram and made me sign something to say I was ‘aware of the policy that government people should never smoke weed even in countries where smoking weed is legal’.
But now those security people go politely F themselves. It is legal in Bangkok to buy and smoke a joint, and gosh darn it, that’s what I did. It’s not something that is a security threat to you or great country Australia (which often high on the gold medal tally in the early days of Olympic game due to our swimmers – who presumably don’t smoke weed) you very silly people. Anyway I have a new tradition of smoking a joint in Bangkok every time I go there (as long as it remains legal) which I will adher to even when I signed the stupid form saying I am aware of the policy that government employees don’t smoke no weed – or lie about it, which I refuse to do! I mean I’m kind of Buddhist so I can’t lie and smoke weed otherwise I’ll be breaking 2 of only 3 precepts Buddhist should follow!
Then it was off to Helsinki to eat some reindeer and look at cool buildings and visit some cool island with cannons. Plus stop off at the record shop to buy a few records and visit markets and stuff.
The reindeer was a bit gamey for me and the restaurant smelt like reindeer. I’d go for some cod, or other fish, in the future, that’s also super delicious. Glad I tried reindeer though.
Then Vienna for 5 days of Eurovision, where we went to two live semi-final shows – one was a preview show but you still see the whole show, even fake practice voting at the end where staff pretend to be surprised when their countries go through to the final! And, of course, your guaranteed freaking awesome FLAMES!!!
So Juanito Travels’ fan-only tip: if you’re booking Eurovision tickets, preview shows are cheaper than the live shows, you can usually get better tickets, and they are exactly the same thing – even down to the same lame jokes and compulsory singing of some ABBA song – except for the voting, which is even funnier when they are just practicing the voting and the staff act all shocked and surprised to get in. The fake voting is remarkably accurate though, which is food for thought for all you conspiracy theorists. Please don’t start any conspiracy theories on that basis though, that’s just super lame.
Then we went off to Regensburg in Germany where we stayed at the most awesome, loft-style hotel room, with a bathtub, and a good sofa for romance. Regensburg is on the banks of the mighty Danube River, and lots of Germans love hanging out down on its banks drinking beers and smoking pot in the late spring evenings.
And then we went off to Nuremberg – good job Russell Crowe by the way with that film, I was so drawn into you character I forgot you were you, you should have won another Oscar, but playing the number Two nazi (and I mean that also in the sense of ‘number 2’ as in ‘poo/shit’ (Göring not you Mr Crowe just to be clear!) goes against the politics of those Oscars) . We visited some castle on a hill after being served a platter of about 3kg of assorted meat at a ‘witch’s house’ (Hexenhausle) restaurant along with a delicious German red ale – I highly recommend Tucher red ale!).
Oh, and Mr Crowe, see you should have played one of the attorneys, Maximilian Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for such a role in Judgment at Nuremberg at the 34th Academy Awards on April 9, 1962. Though, considering I’ve never even had any of my great film ideas made – you could take that career advice with a pinch of salt. But watch out for my Agent Juanito script, you’d be perfect for a role in that Mr Crowe! I live on the Gold Coast so once I’m happy with that script we should catch up. That’s also an open invitation to any stars living in Northern NSW or SE Queensland – Margot Robbie and the Hemsworths included. Seriously we could film quite a bit of it at Village Roadshow studios – work/ life balance, just saying, not far to commute for most of you guys.
Whilst on the subject of Nuremberg, we also ate lots of asparagus – I’m not even a big fan of asparagus but it’s delish during the asparagus season – known as Spargelzeit, which runs from mid-April to June sometime. And we criss-crossed the beautiful bridges over the river in the historic centre, to drink more beer.
And then we went onto Ghent in Belgium, a bustling, cosmopolitan canal town, with more beer and a day trip to Brugge (or Bruges, or Brujas in Spanish). Jeeze it was hot by the time we got there though in late May. I wished I had the foresight to book a boat so we could have cruised along the Ghent canals with a few cold beers and sandwiches. Also, had wine outside a church and near another cool castle, and another trip to the record shop for more records.
And then off to Tallinn in Estonia for a few days in the wonderful old town, some more cool buildings, some more great food, including Ukrainian, Georgian and maybe Polish style pelmeni dumplings (in a 1980s inspired restaurant), and a wonderful morning at a sauna and spa centre (Kalev Spa – so many different saunas and spas, only 25 Euro for a day. Oh, so, good).
Along the way, I had more beer.
We went to the Museum of Occupation and the former NKVD (Russian secret service) cells, the later was just near our beautiful renovated medieval hotel. The building NKVD prison was itself in a beautiful building, looking at it you wouldn’t imagine the horrific torture that took place in the basement. These buildings showed the dark side of human nature – something we have to be constantly vigilante of – and the resilience of Estonia in the face of Nazi and then Communist occupation.
Around the Russian Embassy we also saw signs of the continuing aggression of Russia on its neighboring states.
So we don’t own a home. But it’s cool as my wife’s mum, my ‘suegra’ (mother-in-law in Spanish), has said not to worry—we’ll always have a home there in Mexico. Since marrying my Mexican wife it has always been our well thought through back-up plan – go to Mexico if we can’t afford to live in Australia. Former government colleagues are well aware of that plan since I had been telling them for many years.
Travelling really helps you ignore day-to-day reality and opens you up to some other really cool realities, that could become reality only if we put our minds to it.
For example, or por ejemplo en Español, chilling out drinking beers, and eating the best wurst hot dogs on the Danube River on a glorious late spring day. Or like awesome public transport and people riding bicycles everywhere even though they have such shitty weather for most of the year, as in Ghent, Belgium.
Or, when visiting Vienna, experiencing a bustling multi-cultured, and also just cultured, city where the public transport is great, opera is subsidised by the government and housing’s a basic human right, a far cry from the ponzi-like investment scheme that has been developed in Australia. If you haven’t been paying attention to Australia we’ve had this ‘housing crisis’ thing going on for years where housing prices and rentals have become out of reach for the average Aussie mostly due to absurdly generous tax concessions for investors, but also other stuff.
Yes, this is a digression from my usual travel blog (though not really, I always get distracted) but it is kinda related as, despite my holiday spending, I, and all of us, still deserve an affordable home. I still pay taxes – quite a lot. I pay taxes on groceries, on my income, whenever I go out for dinner, plus on the cost of flights etc. And these taxes have been going towards subsidising middle-class, and very wealthy, welfare support. Welfare support for people who not only have a home themselves but also an investment property or two, or three, where these already well-off people get super generous, taxpayer-funded, discounts on the profits – and even losses! – they make on those houses.
This is a far cry from 23 years ago, when, as a student living off of a meagre Austudy (student allowance), supplemented by a little parenting payment, and supporting two young kids, we were able to just afford rent on a 3-bedroom house in Brisbane and have just enough to eat, though I did end up losing a fair bit of weight during those years as we really only just had enough to live off. Now, I feel sorry for those in the same situation. A very sad state of affairs. I feel society has broken the social contract and neglected those less well off in favour of supporting those already well off.
In Vienna, the Gemeindebau housing model treats vital public infrastructure, often incorporating beautiful courtyards, communal green spaces, and social facilities that foster long-term stability and community well-being.
Vienna shows that a city can stay livable and affordable without turning homes into something only wealthy investors, and those with intergenerational wealth, can afford.
And instead of looking at great foreign examples like Vienna to help solve housing inequality, we in Australia have some stupid politicians who demonise foreigners, or foreign students, something non-Aussie, for our housing issues. After 19.5 years in government it’s a trend that’s all too familiar. Rather than do something smart and meaningful to address policy issues, governments constantly deflect and ignore the tough issues that would actually help people. The preference of government is always just maintaining the status quo. That status quo even extends to allowing that ‘blame the foreigners’ game to simmer along largely unchallenged by mainstream politicians.
Better watch that last one, as Mr Crowe’s great performance in Nuremberg shows, ideas like that can quickly go from simmering along largely unchallenged to organising trains to transport innocent people to death camps, ghettos, and incarceration sites. There was even an example of this in one of the central areas of Regensburg where innocent people were imprisoned in the Colosseum building to work as slave labour in factories in the region.
You know what Australia? Start exploring the world and seeing what it has to offer. Go on a holiday with some of that house deposit money. Supporting the status quo can’t always be the default.
All great empires are built on importing great people and great ideas—the vast empire of Genghis Khan, the Roman Empire, the USA, Britain, and pretty much all the powers of Europe have harnessed (and yes, brutally exploited indigenous people) the best and brightest minds of people from around the world to build a better more prosperous society – repeating again, just for the record, screwing over indigenous populations in the process.
Genghis Khan, as brutal as he was in his conquests, had the foresight to requisition talent from around the empire and channel it into building a long-lasting and well run civilisation, though, again, we can’t ignore the brutality that went into creating this civilisation in the first place. And also now we are able to draw this talent together from around the world in a much more civilised and much less brutal and unjust way.
Exploring the world gives you perspective. Standing around like our former Prime Minister and the Australian Liberal Party President Tony Abbott—making speeches about how the Anglo-Celtic Judeo-Christian civilization is under threat from outsiders, as he recently did, doesn’t help anyone and just reflects the lack of intelligent insight that some high-profile people have (or don’t have).
Bringing in talent, and ideas, from overseas, having decent social policies, and looking after people makes your country great! Not whining about some great white past.
As mentioned, after working for the Australian Government for 19.5 years I recently took a redundancy package as they are cutting spending due to inflation and a cost of living crisis (on top of the housing crisis). I have worked in higher education, research, climate change, employment and workplace relations, for a home affairs global business and talent attraction taskforce, and even in a junior minister’s office in Parliament House, Canberra.
In those 19.5 years, there have been so many opportunities to make a real difference on a range of issues which have been wasted due to poor, petty, tiny, unambitious, and unintelligible political decisions.
I’ll give you some examples of the policy failures I witnessed in my time in government.
I was at the Climate Change Dept in the early 2000s. Our mission: cut CO2.
- What we did: Put out a brochure saying you shouldn’t turn on your dishwasher if it’s not full, replace your old tungsten light globes with LEDs and consider the star ratings on fridges. We also put in subsidies for wealthy people to buy solar panels. Why we did it? Because it deflected responsibility away from government onto the average citizen.
- What we could have done: Dumped coal export profits into R&D for solar and batteries. We should’ve funded panels for low-income roofs to help with the cost of living, not just padded the wallets of the already wealthy.
- Result: Paris is melting in 45 degree heat, but my mum’s a total gangster—she draws zero from the grid and exports 4000kW like a boss as her roof is full of panels and she has a stack of batteries.
- A big no thanks to idiots like Tony Abbott and friends who did everything in their power to prevent my mum (and other gangster oldies) getting power from the roof. In about 6-7 years, she will have totally FREE power for the next 10-15 years!! Mostly thanks to the Chinese for bringing down the cost of solar PV! But also subsidies from the current government.
My last job in Higher Education. The goal was boosting higher education participation.
- What we did: Had a big review and produced a big report. For purely ideological reasons, previous governments actually raised the cost of university degrees under the “Jobs Ready Graduate” program! Actually raised the price of degrees like Arts which have high employment rates.
- What we should have done: Universal study support for all 18-year-olds. Instead, they treat education as a private debt rather than a social win. It’s peanut-brained policy from the Howard/Abbott era.
- The foreign student grift: We demonise them while they effectively sponsor the entire sector. They’re our third-largest export, yet we starve the system and make the individual pay.
On a personal note, I have a son studying medicine. When you have some medical stuff going down in years to come, you’ll want him, and others like him, ready to go with a medical degree in hand. He might even become a gynaecologist so if you’re having issues down the vags’ way, in the reproductive organ type area, he might be poking his nose down there to help out.
My son lives independently in Canberra, his biological mum has schizophrenia and barely supports herself. I live with my mum (the medical student son’s nana) in another state. Despite that, some politicians in Canberra years ago decided my son would be ineligible to receive independent income support until he reached the age of 22 based on my income which, even with living with my mum, was not enough to save for a house deposit, and barely enough to pay the huge mortgage I would have to get if I did buy a house.
Why 22? I have no reasonable answer to that, because there is none. I guess it’s based on students leaving school around 18, studying a 3-year degree while living at home, then getting a job by the magic number 22 so the government doesn’t have to pay anything.
It is so annoyingly illogical how policy is decided so arbitrarily in Australia.
Just to be fair, I’ll pause to have a go at the Australian Labor Party who has been largely too timid and more concerned with staying in power than reversing or changing what they’ve inherited! In essence they just maintain most of the policies from the Conservative side of politics. The ALP haven’t got rid of the Jobs Ready Graduate degree price hikes, for example, a policy which means valuable Arts degrees and humanities studies are extraordinarily expensive.
And they still maintain the same policy of not allowing students access to study support until the student is 22 or unless their parents are themselves living in poverty, despite those students being needed to go look at people’s vags and other important bits of the body!
This means students like my son have to work part-time and therefore study part-time, taking years longer to obtain a degree that ultimately benefits Australia. And still some politicians worry about foreigners. It ain’t the foreigners who have been in charge of this country making all these decisions. It’s been you people and your status quo at all costs attitudes.
It’s not rocket science, you don’t need to set up some Australian Tertiary Education Commission and a bunch of commissioners to work it out – as the Labor government decided to do. If you want people studying (with the aim of having 80-odd percent having higher education qualifications by 2030), make it as cheap and easy as possible to study, and provide financial support to those studying. Don’t put it on parents to have to pay for their children to go study things that will ultimately benefit all of society – I mean my son is never going to go look at any of my bits!
Australia has had too much influence from a small but vocal group of troglodytes and racist philistines. Historical apologies there, I know the term ‘Philistine’ is also historically racist—I know this because I studied an Arts/humanities degree and I know stuff, unlike leaders like Tony Abbott and others, who are too scared of golliwogs, the yellow peril of Asia, the passion of the Latin Americans, and probably Polish pelmenis to contribute anything useful to society.
And they’re worried about me posting photos of legal weed shops in Bangkok! It’s a great place for the munchies by the way, oodles of noodles, mango sticky rice, and the reliable old frosties from the 7-11 served with chocolate soy milk in a hotel coffee cup . I’m not sure the name Lollipop would pass any future legal weed shop name regulations in Australia one day if they decide to legalize it and get heaps of tax revenue rather than spend billions trying to stop it like the very silly people they are.
Once we got rid of the White Australia Policy, back in the 1970s, and allowed people from all nations in, we started to actually be a serious economy and not some sheep-shearing backwater where we dig up coal and iron ore. We started the process of becoming a smart country, bold and expansive in our thinking. A country that can take on the world, not retreat from it.
Apologies for being over-indulgent in my anti-stupid government policy rave in my travel blog, but as soon as I left government I finally felt the freedom to say what’s been on my mind for all these years. I’m like grandpa Simpson in that episode where he’s working for the hamburger joint and realises he should be on the customers’ side complaining about the place. And it feels good! So good, to get this off my chest. And I know it’s not entirely coherent, but frankly I’ve had enough of people who have no vision whatsoever, who draw on ghosts of the past, to somehow lead us to some glorious ‘great’ future which is actually dragging us to some shitty past times. If you believe any of them, you are doing yourself a disservice.
Sitting here on the veranda of the house I grew up in, on the street I grew up in, I look across at homes sold for $3.3 million and $2.75 million – they just kept adding zeroes onto the sale price – I maintain that the only ‘real’ worth of a house is to provide people with the basic human requirement to have a roof over their heads. That’s their worth. When you start talking about the ‘property ladder’ you’re really just saying, us on the top are fine, and you at the bottom can go screw yourselves and while you’re at it, aspire to be like us at the top, because we like you looking up to us because we’re so special.
They set up a system like that in the Hunger Games universe, where a select few could aspire to get in District One if they were willing to kill off a few others along the way.
My dad, an alcoholic carpenter who liked to have a flutter on the gee-gees (horses), managed to pay off our house on one average wage. My mum didn’t bring in a wage. Six kids were raised in this house.
Enough said for today. Go travel! You’ll hopefully get more enlightened. Maybe by the time you get back those house prices could have fallen a little as well.
I’ll get back to more travel blogging in my next posts.
Until next time.
P.S perhaps expect more regular posts now that I’m gainfully unemployed again after many years of government work! I am prioritising writing my Agent Juanito feature film script though, so perhaps don’t hold your breath.
P.P.S we’re off to Guadalajara, Mexico in a few months again. Staying for three months this time, oughta be cool. They have a pretty good housing system there as well!
P.P.P.S one last beer picture – I swear I’m not an alcoholic, just an enthusiastic holiday drinker 😉
