Tales from the Departure Lounge

#17 Jogvan Klein (Forever Young And Faroese)

• Andy Plant & Nick Cuthbert • Season 1 • Episode 17

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You can take the boy out of the Faroe Islands but you can't take the Faroe Islands out of the man. This is dark, brooding, nordic noir from the North Atlantic. If you like your international directors with a rugged beard and a sardonic sense of humour then look no further than Jogvan Klein (University of Queensland).

In this episode we explore Jogvan's relationship with his own father who is an acclaimed Faroese musician, and his misadventures growing up in a Danish hippie, music school.  He recalls the traumatic premature birth of his daughter while living in Vietnam, with his wife going in to labour whilst he was away on a trip. Expect gallows humour and more proof that it will all be alright, even when it's not.

This episode ends with an extract of Kaj Klein singing Bob Dylan's Forever Young. You can find Síðsta kvøldmáltíðin (The Last Supper) along with his other albums on Spotify, Amazon Music and iTunes. Please check it out because it is really, really good. Legacy. 

Final boarding call: The Faroe Islands

This episode is sponsored by Loncom Consulting! Helping agents, language schools and institutions integrate and configure their CRM systems like HubSpot and Salesforce - check out www.loncomconsulting.com/education 

Tales from the Departure Lounge is a Type Nine production for The PIE www.thepienews.com

Andy:

I've noticed that the bandwidth is pretty bad.

Nick:

he had some insane stories

Andy:

we just have to work through it

Nick:

welcome to Tales from the Departure Lounge. This is a podcast about travel for business, for pleasure, or for study. My name's Nick and I'm joined by my co-pilot, Andy. And together we're gonna be talking to some amazing guests about how travel has transformed their. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey. Welcome to the podcast.

Andy:

Today on the show we are joined by Yak Van Klein. He's the Director of Future Students at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, which is a brand new job for him, and he's also the chair of the Australian University's International Directors Forum.

Nick:

It's a change of pace this episode. It's, dark, brooding Nordic noir.

Andy:

With a little bit of a squeaky chair into dispersed. If you can pick that out, listeners.

Nick:

This episode really is about the relationship we have with our father

Andy:

Absolutely.

Nick:

Especially if your father was a Farese rockstar.

Andy:

This is a, a little bit of a, a deep session, isn't it? A little bit therapeutic maybe.

Nick:

There is a special tribute here, and I think people will find this a little bit emotional.

Andy:

He's got a great attitude that shines through very much thinking that it'll be all right.

Nick:

comes in handy when his partner goes into labor, several weeks prematurely whilst he's overseas.

Andy:

He's the Great Dane who was descended from a Pharaoh East Pirate hero. He takes us from the Windswept Pharaoh Islands to riding on the back of a scooter in Saigon. Fire, some seriously traumatic incidents. Let's get some tales from the Departure Lounge from Yag Van Klein.

Jogvan:

My whole, rebellion against my dad was to not do drugs and go to business school had one of those sort of fight and flight moments where I was like, can I get out of this somehow? Can I just run away? But you can't, it's just, it's your mess it's your vomit all over aisle L eight. I just, I sat there in a completely empty hospital in Bangkok, completely alone I, I didn't know if anyone had survived The one thing that's worth packing is very good travel insurance. I think it cost us just all cost them north of a million dollars. Us.

Nick:

Before we get into this episode, I wanna introduce you to a new sponsor to the podcast and a company that I am very excited about and that is Lancom for Education. We live in this digital economy, and I meet leaders every day from agents, academic institutions, and language schools who are struggling to manage all of their digital systems and data reports. They've invested in HubSpot or Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or Zendesk, but they're only using a fraction of their potential. Long com are a team of logical, technically minded people who bridge those gaps. They actually slot straight into your team, and they do everything from cleaning up the data to CRM integrations while managing accommodation or home state bookings through channel management systems. But the real magic is when they help leaders produce better management reports and forecasting. This is the life blur of good strategy of investment plans and winning hearts and minds of new partners. We all collect data, but what are we really doing with it? And I'm telling you now that all you need is lancom to get ahead. They're here to solve your problems, unlock the full potential in your data, and grow through digital systems. So go to lancom consulting.com/education and select a time you want to chat. It's as easy as that. Now let's get on with the episode.

Andy:

Yak van, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

Jogvan:

Good to be here.

Andy:

Did I say that right? Is it Jovan

Jogvan:

No, it's yak. No one gets it right. Not even my children pronounced my name correctly. I'm from a place called the Faroh Islands, and if you're from my little island you say Yeg van. If you're from the one, five minutes away, you say Yoga van.

Andy:

I must be from a completely different one.

Jogvan:

Yeah. Different island.

Andy:

So the first question we ask our guests always is, where would you like to take them in the world? So where would you like to take our listeners today?

Jogvan:

I guess there's a bit of a nostalgic one, but I'll take you back home to the Faroh Islands. It's where I was born and it's where my family is from. And moved from there when I was very little. So I, I don't actually remember living there, but I do absolutely love going there. the landscape is absolutely unbelievable. There's just nothing that's not unbelievable there. One corner after another. It's just so stunning. and nowadays they even have amazing food. You know, we used to be boiled cod when I was there as a kid, but there's an amazing food scene there. And there's just some of the things you can do, you can't do with them anywhere else. You just walk up the hills and then you turn around and you can actually see five islands at once. and it's quite remarkable and a sort of spoiler alert for the James Bonds fans. But the last scene where he dies in the last one, that's one of the islands that you can see from the other side. It's, it's just incredible. I took my son there at first when he was eight months, and I just strapped him to me and just walked up the mountain and sort of put him down here. Go boy, one day this will be yours. Uh,

Nick:

It's Ragnar. it's Viking.

Jogvan:

It is a bit. You can drink from the streams, how exciting is that?

Andy:

just check for dead sheep further up. that's my advice.

Jogvan:

yeah.

Andy:

Do you ever get that itch where you go near a hill or a mountain and I have to either run or climb up it and get to the top and say that, you know, that I've conquered it

Jogvan:

there's something about the smell and the grass Once you actually get up on, on a proper mountain, each step of the way, you can turn around and you just see this incredible, landscape I could sit there and just stare at it all day. That's my dream. One day I don't think I would go and live in the Pharaohs now, but just sit there when I'm old in a little cabin. Just sit there and just look at, look at the water

Andy:

For the ignorant among us, including me and Nick, how many are islands? Are there, in terms of the Faroh islands and governance and identity?

Jogvan:

First of all, define them, you gotta travel, north of Scotland and head towards the east coast of Iceland, and it's halfway there. there's 17 islands that are inhabited, 18 in total. Most of them have tunnels connecting them or bridges. So it has a remarkable, tunnel system including, an underground roundabout. under the ocean, um, it's technically part of the kingdom of Denmark.

Andy:

Its own language as well.

Jogvan:

Yeah. Farise. Yeah, My mother's from Iceland. my first language was Icelandic, but my father was from the Pharaohs and so we spoke, Icelandic infers at home whilst we were living in Denmark.

Andy:

You'd mentioned food earlier. I also read in the paper a while back about a two Michelin styled restaurant that takes about two days to get to from mainland Europe. Um, in little boats. It's, I think it's called something like, Cox.

Jogvan:

Yeah. Cox.

Andy:

o k.

Jogvan:

The guy who has that, he has a couple of restaurants in torso now, a one called Rust that I went to when I was there, and it's fantastic cuisine very farese in a way that in the, menu, it just says just no vegetarian options, just, it's just not an option. Um, but Cox, the guy had some sort of dispute with the local council. so it was already in a fairly obscure part of the Pharaohs and he moved it to, the west coast of Greenland. And the only way to get there is basically by going to, which is on the Disco Bay. And from there you gotta take a boat I think 12 people live in that small town where they've set it up

Andy:

you've really gotta be a foodie, haven't

Jogvan:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Andy:

if any of our listeners have, get in touch, I wanna speak to you,

Jogvan:

yeah. Cox, k o k s.

Nick:

We've, heard from quite a few guests around Scandinavia, and Northern Europe and the education system. What was the schooling system like on these islands?

Jogvan:

I went to school in Denmark. My schooling was probably a little bit, unconventional in many ways.

Nick:

How so?

Jogvan:

Oh gosh, my dad was a, he was a musician and he sent me to a, I mean, I've not being unkind by calling it a hippie school. It was a fairly left wing, school founded in the sixties by a group of people with long hair. And it was all about music. I mean, shoes were optional and attendance absolutely optional. We would forever have ex grills from Latin America come through. Lots of Cubans, you know, the Cuban brothers came across and taught us all about music and playing Salta. But we always had to sort of self-funded a bit. And we did that mainly by putting on what can only be described as reggae concerts and sold grogg to our friends.

Andy:

This is brilliant. I think the most exciting, I think the most exciting presentation I got at my school was, A fireman, and you had communist gorillas

Jogvan:

Just really mad they somehow managed to get a fair bit of funding outta the eu. Lisbon was a cultural capital, I think in 1995. And they basically just flew us down there to busk on a boat. I don't know. and we just was so drunk the whole time and I was 15. And it's just completely unacceptable of behavior, really.

Nick:

I wanna know what instrument you played in this Danish reggae ensemble.

Jogvan:

Well this is the thing, Nick, my whole, rebellion against my dad was to not do drugs and go to business school, I mean, Completely gutted the old man. But, um,

Andy:

It's reverse rebellion, isn't it? Yeah.

Jogvan:

is, yeah, when I was born, he bought me a ukulele and, he thought I would, start there and then go into lead guitar at some point, but I just smashed it as soon as I could. I just wasn't a fan. I did actually then when he turned 40 many years later, I bought him a replacement ukulele and I went and did ukulele lessons for months. and then went in cahoots with his band and the real present for him on the day was that we would do a duet of Bob Dylan's, forever Young.

Nick:

Oh, there is the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, I've seen them they do smells like Teen Spirit

Jogvan:

through my little short sojo into the ukulele community, there seems to be quite a thriving scene. The main, website for ukulele tabs is called UK Hunt. Um, yeah. That

Andy:

Careful how you type.

Jogvan:

Yeah,

Nick:

I feel like we're missing quite a large chunk of your life. We've gotta somehow get to Australia.

Jogvan:

I ended up in Australia as an exchange student in my undergrad. I did a semester at Deakin and I had a girlfriend at the time and we broke up. So I, I returned home without any money, without any, any girlfriend and without anywhere to live really. And desperately needed a job. I went down to hand in my papers to get my credit transferred. And I was just a sort of poster that they were looking for staff in the student counseling area, in the international office down there and just put in my application. And, I got that immediately and through that job ran into an Australian girl so when she finished her degree we decided to move back.

Andy:

How long have you been in Australia now?

Jogvan:

I moved here in 2007 and, uh, apart from a couple of years in Vietnam, so what's that? 13 years?

Nick:

And is the referral is diaspora in Australia.

Jogvan:

You know what? I just found I have a second cousin here in Brisbane. It is quite weird. Without wanting to turn this into some sort of history podcast about Pharaohs, national heroes, uh, no sort of portal was, in the early 18 hundreds, he took some vaccines from Denmark and took them to the Pharaohs and broke the embargo at the time and became a national hero slash pirate in, in the process. And he's also my great-grandfather. Which is something that sounds impressive until you find out, basically anyone from the Pharaoh's claim him as his great grandfather. so this big book came out some genealogy as they can only do it in small places, has everyone who's a descendant of him. And I thought someone, hey, well there I am. And I went, oh, wait a minute, who on on earth is this? And turns out my dad's cousin's kid moved to Brisbane some years ago.

Nick:

Have met up

Jogvan:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're caught up. Spoke Farese. She's, married to the former national, handball goalkeeper for Australia. And they met playing handball in Denmark.

Nick:

Could you describe a little bit of Vietnam I don't think anyone's told us too much about living in Vietnam.

Jogvan:

Vietnam is just profoundly wonderful. I lived there for three years, I had a great opportunity to go and basically set up the international office at R M I T in Vietnam. we lived in, in Saigon. I moved there. my wife and our son, we moved there and he was two at the time, so we thought seems like a good time to do it. Saigon is so crazy. It's so hectic and intense. Ho Chi men in particular is always on the move. Just because everyone's on a motorbike, everything is always moving. I used to commute about 10 Ks each way, on a scooter. Uh, and at first I thought it was like something outta but, it's really quickly become sort of second nature. And I used to just plunk my son on the front and take him to the school and more often than not, we had to go through all these flooded areas to, to get him there. And now he used to tell him that, oh, this is where we turn it into a jet ski. It wasn't a tough life either. I mean, we had a, a full-time helper at home who would just sort of come in the morning and clean everything and cook everything and pick our children's up and ch and play with them. It was a pretty good life. So when we lived in Vietnam, my wife was pregnant. We thought we were gonna fly back to Brisbane and have the kid. And so I was at API in Singapore, so in, in 2018, and I was Texting the wife from the airport and saying, I'll be home shortly. It's only about an hour from Ho Chi Minh to Singapore. Um, and then when I, I landed, it was actually our nanny, our helper who picked up. And, my wife was in an ambulance and she was being rushed to a hospital. And, um, turns out there was some pretty severe complications with, with the child. And she had a, a thing called help syndrome, which, uh, H E L L P. High and some lower liver, low liver platelet. So it's a sort of severe form of preeclampsia.

Nick:

Wow.

Jogvan:

And we were told, alright, we gotta travel this. We can't fix this here in, in Vietnam. Everyone's gonna die if we do it here. You gotta fly to,, to Bangkok. I hadn't slept for, for about two days. Went home, slept and they were gonna fly us to Bangkok the next day and then absolutely everything hit the fan. And, the whole thing had deteriorated really quite badly. Um, the, the one thing that the Vietnamese doctors probably lack a little bit in their training is bedside manners. So one doctor came in and. Basically told us, oh, these, all these numbers are absolutely terrible. The babies are garner and we're gonna see if we can save you, but we're probably gonna get brain hemorrhage and we don't think you'll make it, um, delivered like that. My, my wife managed to, to tell me, which I'll remind her every now and again, that she did say that I should remarry. Um, and then another doctor comes storming in cuz he'd just arrived. French guy who was quite fantastic, but he'd been reading all these results on his phone on the back of a motorbike coming in and some number they read as 400 was actually 800. So now they could, fly us out but it had to be real quick and we ended up in this, it was like a man with a van. It wasn't an ambulance, And in Saigon traffic to the airport. And anyways, we got, got through it. Flew to the old Don Wang airport, in Bangkok. I got taken aside into the really quite nice, Private lounge, so I get sort of pulled aside and asked, you know, would you like a latte? So I'm sort of perfect, Oxford English. And I said, yeah, sure, sure, why not? And I sit there, have my latte, and off my passport goes on a silver platter. Actually, that's one that's, that's a proper good lounge That is, no, screw the, screw the mango chop.

Nick:

stay on track. You can't go onto the latte story. I need to know what happens to wife and baby.

Jogvan:

yeah. So actually, they wheel her off and, uh, she has the baby, super early. she was one pound, uh, when she was born, and I just, I sat there in a completely empty hospital in Bangkok, completely alone I, I didn't know if anyone had survived for hours.

Nick:

How many weeks early was she?

Jogvan:

she was x 27 weeks, so she was weeks.

Andy:

Wow.

Jogvan:

Yeah. Throughout the whole thing. I was just, I, I I just didn't really doubt that it wasn't gonna be fine. Um, even when they told us it wasn't gonna be fine.

Andy:

Is your wife a similarly relaxed person or was she in a different state?

Jogvan:

uh, I mean, she was in a coma at the end, so, um, So, yeah, she was heaps relaxed. Um, no, we spent four months in that hospital in, in Bangkok with, some pretty hairy moments. Um, but, my daughter's fine. It all, all worked out really well.

Nick:

This is one of people's nightmares, isn't it, going into labor whilst your partner is overseas. Like I'll just go on this trip and then I'll be back for the birth. But obviously this was super premature,

Jogvan:

that's exactly it. I mean, we had it all planned out. We were gonna fly to Australia and have the baby there, and how it'd been with the other kid. But it didn't end up that way.

Nick:

And then that's the other point, talk so much about how great Vietnam was and is, and for a lot of people they have this idyllic lifestyle away from the western rat race. But then it always comes down to healthcare, doesn't it? That's always the deal breaker where people say, until this happened, then I wanted to come home

Jogvan:

That was a big part of why we had to leave in the end. It just becomes a bit convoluted that every time you need to see a specialist, you gotta fly to Thailand. The one thing that's worth packing is very good travel insurance. I think it cost us just all cost them north of a million dollars. Us.

Andy:

About$50,000 in lattes.

Jogvan:

We had 24 hours to come up with a name and we hadn't even talked about names yet. So when my wife finally, woke up from the coma, I was like, you know, wake up. Good news, you're alive. Uh, bit of admin. We gotta come up with a name. Quick smart cuz I need to fill this in. and she just sort one eye open, just went ths like thoughts. That's Iceland. My, my grandmother was thos. It means goddess of thunder really? Or Thor and Deis is goddess. I was like this. Yeah, this is a really beautiful, I love it. But you know, it does sound a little bit like tortoise. I just wanna flag it. And No, that's what you want, Ortis. So I had find someone who could commit to the Thai alphabet and how to write the name.

Andy:

The next section of the podcast is called any laptops, liquids, or sharp objects. What do you have to take with you when you travel?

Jogvan:

I don't have like a thing. I think as I've been traveling with kids as well. I'm finding it like unbelievably easy to travel. Um, traveling with kids is awful. It's just the worst. So when, whenever I travel, um, just on my own, I've got a very high pain threshold.

Nick:

For people who haven't got kids, they just don't understand that flying without them, is just an absolute joy. Because you know how bad it can be,

Jogvan:

yeah.

Nick:

a young child I likened it to sit in with a balm on your knee, it's gonna go off at some point

Jogvan:

oh man. I remember I, when I took my son on a flight back to Denmark when he was very little and he just projectile vomited everywhere. And I had one of those sort of fight and flight moments where I was like, can I get out of this somehow? Can I just run away? But you can't, it's just, it's your mess it's your vomit all over aisle L eight. It's just bad.

Andy:

Have you got any, particular travel stories apart from children projectile vomiting? Is there anything you'd like to to share?

Jogvan:

Back, my school days. We went to Portugal paid for by the European Union again, just busing randomly. Um, and they got this sort of idea that the best way to not get robbed cuz we're staying down at the port, was that one kid holds everyone's money. Which fell to me. So when I duly, of course was held up at knife point and stabbed in the leg, I had everyone's money. The kids that went two years after us, they all went to Tanzania. And that was when that was a big fairy that, that capsized on the lake and they were meant to have been on it. The whole thing is shambles. And I, but I think it's sort of, uh, informed my approach to travel, which is a sort of slightly, it'll be all right.

Andy:

I just rewind a little bit. Did you say you got stabbed in the leg?

Jogvan:

Well cut in the leg.

Andy:

It'll be all right. I got stabbed in the leg. It's

Nick:

Did you

Jogvan:

Yeah, well,

Nick:

seek medical attention

Jogvan:

The way he sort of attacked us. The guy sort of kept saying that he had aids and he had nothing to lose. So probably should checked out at this time, but I've got a bandaid when I came back. Um, yeah,

Andy:

the next part of the show is called What's the purpose of Your Visit? So why do you do what you do?

Jogvan:

To be completely blunt, how I started doing it was a complete fluke that day that I walked into the, the international office in, at our university trying to get credit for my study, and I saw a poster that they were looking for people I really liked working with students, I was a student advisor at the time, I remember for example when I was doing that, when the, the boxing days of an army hit and we did a lot of the work with affected students for that. When we came to came to Australia, I just sort of sought that having worked at a university before, they could clearly recognize everything that I had done, and I just kept doing it. And it's, I mean, I think it's a continuation of, that sort of slightly crazy path that I got put on in school. Traveling around, and seeing the world. I do like that part of it.

Nick:

And did you say your, your father had passed away now, did you say that

Jogvan:

Yeah. Yeah,

Nick:

and that you had all that early part of your life where you rebelled against his design for life, his model for life.

Jogvan:

yeah. Yeah.

Nick:

I mean, we all end up as our fathers, don't we? How, how's that going?

Jogvan:

I think I might be a slight exception to the rule here. Um, yeah. My, my father, he, he was incredibly rock and roll. Um, but he was also a total homebody. I mean, He never left. he went to Cypress once as a young sailor. I mean, everyone in the Pharaohs is a bit of a sailor, so he did that when he was about 16. Then just played lead guitar. Grew his hair long and rocked out for, for the rest of it. I'm profoundly different from him, I think. that's what everyone says, isn't it though?

Andy:

The final section of the podcast is called Anything to Declare. What is it You'd like to tell our listeners?

Jogvan:

So this is where, I can sell something. And, I thought I would, not sell anything work related. I, the University of Queensland probably doesn't need, too much introduction to this. So it was a great university, but I thought I would, um, actually sell my dad's latest album. So this was a bit of a project. So my dad, as we talked about, was a musician. he passed away just before the pandemic in August in 2019. And, he'd been on well for, for, for a long time. And, he'd always had all these sort of projects on the go. And when he passed away, we had a, a funeral for him there and, we were gonna have one the next year in, um, in, in the Pharaohs. But of course the next year was all of a sudden when I was, um, locked up in Melbourne. So we were gonna do it then the following year. And, in the end, I actually ended up watching his second funeral, on YouTube. Uh, which again, I'm sort of slightly too stingy to buy that fancy, uh,, ala YouTube. So, um, I'm very much laugh at it now, but my, the sort of a typical Protestant, depressing funeral and when everyone walks out, just fades to black and went straight to a Maybelline ad, so it was. Quite sort of, uh, uh, sort, slightly odd, um, uh, odd time. But we, we did actually then manage through this whole process, of the lockdown finding through all these files and Dropbox and, and various things. He actually had some pretty progressed, files. And, uh, it was, it was quite, quite emotional sort of finding a file where, You know, he, he, he'd clearly gotten up in the middle of the night and he was in, in a fair bit of pain, but he was singing and, and just recording and, particularly I guess hearing his voice. And he was a real sort of musician's musician. for example, insisted in recording everything in the Pharaoh language, which. Which requires his son to then flog his album on a podcast. Cause it's not, doesn't really sell itself. and he had all these mates who, who are like the absolute top musicians in Denmark, who play with all the top bands. And anyone who's, anyone in the Pharaoh would what came up. And, and I, I sort of had to probably get out of the way. Pretty quickly, cuz I'm not musical, but managing to, uh, with his wife, distribute all these files and getting them all recorded. We actually did manage to, to put it together and she, she did, most of the heavy lifting. We produced an album sort of post as album, which is available on good, streaming services. So if you search for that k a j. Klein, k l e i n, Kai Klein, um, uh, he's there on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your music.

Andy:

Awesome. We'll put a link in the episode notes as well.

Nick:

Yeah. And what was the album? What was the album called?

Jogvan:

Uh, Swiss, uh, multiyear. So it means, it literally means that the last supper in fairways

Nick:

Amazing. I think I'm right in saying that David Bowie produced an album, Whilst he was, whilst he was terminally ill, as a, as a

Jogvan:

Yeah.

Nick:

goodbye to his family, his final words.

Jogvan:

Yeah. I, I think so. And it's, I mean, it's, It's a real sort of treasure to have, and in particular to the kids. Um, and for me and the family that, you know, that we have all this music that's really great. So I, I recommend it. It's, it's very good. it's very feral. He, it's, um, it's my old man, he's in the album. You can see he's sort of, has a, had a sort of big beard and, and, and a funny hat. So I guess in some ways his, I am kind of turning into him. Hmm.

Nick:

You'll end up in the cabin one day, won't you?

Jogvan:

Absolutely. I was just sitting there watching, watching the ocean and um, he sounds a bit like, he's a very sort of deep, deep voice. He sounds like some Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen kind of cross in Farrow East. So it's quite, quite the soundtrack to, uh, sort of, uh, sort of late summer, in the far.

Andy:

I'm gonna download it and have a listen.

Jogvan:

Please do.

Andy:

Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show, yak van. It's been great having you.

Jogvan:

my absolute pleasure and uh, look forward to seeing you out there somewhere some time.

May God bless. You always. Wishes come true. For you. Ah, That was Chi Klein singing Bob dins forever young.

Nick:

Tales from the Departure Lounge is a type nine production for the pie.

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