Film Funds, Pay Gaps & Denmark’s Stress Bill: LWID S1E10

Welcome to Last Week in Denmark's official podcast.

In this episode, hear Journalist, Wizzi Magnussen, and Founder of Last Week in Denmark, Narcis George Matache, present this week's newsletter headlines and deep dive into some of the below topics:

• Saving Denmark's movie industry
• Tax time 
• Stress and how to manage it 
• Workplace gender inequality 
• Nationwide cyberattacks and the risk to Denmark's electricity
• New embassies coming to Moldova, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Malaysia
• Particle filters for old diesel cars
• Major volcanic eruption expected in Iceland

and more...

Produced by Wizmedia

Transcript Editor: Ioana, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ioana-nechifor/

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🎵 Music,Jack Leatherbarrow @ Wizmedia: https://wiz-media.co.uk/

Transcript

WIZZI: Welcome to the Last Week in Denmark podcast. I'm your host, Wizzi Magnussen, and I'm here with founder of Last Week in Denmark, Narcis, to discuss this week's news and offer you extra insight into what's been happening and how it could affect you. Now, let’s jump in. It is a cold, wet and windy day in Copenhagen. How is it in Aalborg Narcis?

NARCIS: I mean, I'm looking outside and I'm happy that my greenhouses, I have two of them, they are still, they're still there. I'm quite happy for it. But I did a lot of, let's just say, prevention measures. I literally like plugged them to the earth to make sure that they're not going anywhere because I kind of expected that the wind power is getting stronger here in Denmark. I mean, and that's, that's, that's expected, right? I mean, we are in 2023, a third of the way towards 2030 with all the climate change and all the, you know, extreme weather conditions, storms is going to become just a normal situation for us down here in the north.

WIZZI: So it is getting windy. That's a fact.

NARCIS: Yes, that's kind of windy, you can say.

WIZZI: Okay, have you had a good week?

NARCIS: Yeah, I mean, we, we went traveling week as well. We had Thisted on, on Friday, which was a, like a fantastic surprise. We were supposed to be like 20 people. The place was supposed to be for 20 people, but then 53 people showed up. So we even had to take tables out so that we put only chairs because literally was too many people for the, for the location that, that we had. But it was very cozy because we were so many people on a very few square meters. So it was a very heated atmosphere and people were quite happy and it was a good experience, I might say, we had in Thisted definitely what the international community in this state is getting, it's obviously hungry for events because it's in the middle of nowhere, honestly speaking. So there are not that many events in English happening down there. It was also quite interesting to see that we had people coming that could not speak English. So they had translators with them. So we had like in a corner, Ukrainian translator. In another corner, Nepalese translator, were speaking in the same time, like with us in the, in the presentation. But it went fine. So I think it was, it was quite nice. And yesterday we were in Aalborg back in the home ground. You can say again, big surprise. We expected a couple of people, but then again, full house and that was, that was, that was very nice. So the last two events really left a good mark on us. Of course it was a bit stressful because we booked only so much food for the event. But then we had to make quick decisions and ensure that it, it ends up being still a good event which, which it was. But what about, how was your week?

WIZZI: Good. I'm off all the antibiotics now. Various specialist appointments still coming up, but finally starting to get into a good working routine again. So it's nice to have, have my brain back a little bit this week. That's been nice because it's been a tough few weeks in the world of Wizmedia.

NARCIS: I think all of our people are happy that you're back. Hopefully you'll stay back for as long as possible.

WIZZI: Yeah, for sure. I endeavor to and it's nice to, nice to hear that people are happy that I'm back. So what else is new in the world of Last Week in Denmark this week?

NARCIS:

To be honest, it's, it's not much new in terms of the Last Week in Denmark itself. We kind of finished a lot of the October things which were when we were quite busy. You know, we had all the referral campaign. We're gonna have to announce soon the winners for the survey, because remember we put up some laptops up for winning for the people who participated in the survey. So we will be doing that next week. And besides that there isn't much new. We're gonna continue doing these events around the country. We're taking a break next weekend, but we will be back on 3rd of December with two events in the same day. In the morning in Billund, in the afternoon in Esbjerg. And of course we're going to end up our tour in Skive. So if some of you are from Skive or around, we'll be seeing you on 9th of December. But yeah, otherwise there will be a lot of new articles on the website. So keep an eye on it.

WIZZI: And that website is LWID.dk, isn't it?

NARCIS: Exactly.

WIZZI: So moving on Narcis. Can you please talk us through some of the news that's a headlines for this week?

NARCIS: We, we mentioned about the money, like the largest public investment that Denmark made in Danish film. So they put like 622 million kronas yearly to save the movie. The movie industry in Denmark. What happens is that we're going to see a lot more Danish movies, Danish documentaries, Danish series. Now the cinemas actually have to sell 29% of the tickets for movies made in Denmark. So that also means in the cinemas you'll be seeing more Danish, Danish movies. And also I expect several municipalities to establish their own regional film funds. So that means we're gonna see all sorts of calls for: do you have a movie idea? Do you want to make it reality? Apply for funding here. So definitely they are trying to give a lifeline to the movie industry because it has gone really badly lately for them because a lot of people started to move to Norway or Sweden to film because it's cheaper to go there because of the, their currency became much, much more valuable, much less valuable. And that's why a lot of movie sets are moving there. The, the scenario is kind of, I mean the scenario, the scenery is kind of similar. So yeah, they were quite hit by, by this situation. So there's a huge investment. So what, what I can tell is that there will be a lot of more Danish made productions. And if any of you wants to start such a production, be that documentary, serial or movie, keep an eye on the Danish Film Institute and the Ministry of Culture. But enough about that one. It seems that in 2023, women still receive less salary than men. 12.3%. But there has been progress. In the last 15 years it has dropped from 15.6% to 12.3. Of course, we're still far away from perfect equality in terms of pay. But the legislation is in place. So normally by law they, the women and men should receive the same pay, the same pay. But in the end it's still, is still in the hands of the companies and the companies will have to make some sort of change in that direction. If we should see further progress on this, then if you keep looking, you can see that you can start completing your tax advance statements for 2024. So if you know for example, that next year you're going to earn less money, if you know that, I don't know, you'll not be traveling as much to work or you'll start actually traveling to work and your work is more than 12 kilometers away, you definitely go and complete it because it changes your monthly fradrag. So if you want more money to be kept in your account, well, if you have reasons for it, of course, then you should definitely go to Skat.dk and complete it. I mean, now the, now's the time to, to go to go and do that. You can also see your home ownership tax because from now on it will be paid monthly from your, from your salary. So you don't have to pay those two yearly payments. So if you own a house or an apartment, no more, these two large payments per year you basically pay every month. And basically your fraud draw will be lower if you own a property. That's just, that's just how it is. And remember to include all those high heightened interest rates because you know a percentage 25% from your interest rate is deducted from your taxes. So make sure to, to put it in, in the statement. And that's how you can get a more close to reality fradrag, fradragbeing the deductions, the, the part of the salary that you can get to keep. That's. Let's just say it's not taxed. And then what else is there interesting to see.

WIZZI: There's one word that just jumps out of me or one statement that jumps out of me. Stress costs us more than 16 billion DKK every year. Do you want to talk us through that story? It's quite an interesting one. I personally have felt quite stressed recently, mostly because I’ve not been physically well, which means work's piled up and got a bit on top of me and that's caused quite a lot of stress. So keeping calm is something I'm very vested in right now. So I'm interested to discuss why does stress cost society so much money in Denmark?

NARCIS: Well, it seems that stress has become a more costly problem. More and more people are being down on stress and they are staying at home because of stress. Therefore they're not coming to work. And you probably, if you look at the numbers, you can see that it’s mainly people working, for example in care, to be honest, be that disability, elderly or child care. It's quite a significant percentage of them that take sick days because of, because of stress. Funny enough, people working in universities like teachers, research assistants and whatnot, they also seem to be getting a lot of stress. And I may be, that's, that's. That's interesting to find out why then. It seems that the people in the public administration, you know, those people who take forever to do your documentation, they also seem to have lots of stress, if you can imagine that.

WIZZI: Now is that because this has been, these statistics have come at this time in the year when all the accountants are very stressed. I wonder if there's a demand characteristic going on where if you get responses from people in different jobs now the people in public administration are going to be very stressed right now because they've got a lot to get done before the end of the year.

NARCIS: This was done for over the whole year in 2021. This is from 2021, the statistics two years ago and barely now they finished analyzing them. So obviously the situation, they might be worse. The numbers might be different, of course, but it just gives you an idea of kind of where people take more sick days because of stress. And yeah, I mean, I can understand that because it's quite interesting to see that if you go and work in a factory or in gardening or in police or in church, you're less stressed than if you work in care, in restaurants. I understand. If you work in a restaurant, I can understand it can be stressful. You need to really have a way to keep up with the high tempo. And if you don't, then obviously you're gonna fall down to stress if you're not meant to be working in there. So I mean, in here it's more like. It's interesting to see how the different jobs affect people in terms of, in terms of stress. Definitely stress is something that is present now in our society and I think there will be more discussion on the topic in the, in the future because they want to see how can it be reduced. Because right now the most important thing for, for the current government at least is that more people work more days because that's how you keep the economy running further on. So if so many people are staying at home because of stress, the state pays for it. And that's a lot of money. As you can see. 16 billion kronas is a hell of a lot of money that we spend on it every year. So I mean from, from the, from the perspective of statistics, you can see kind of which jobs are most affected by, by this situation and which are not so much. But if you are to think of how to deal with, with stress and what will be, we also have included in the newsletter, some doctor's advice how to deal with stress and when do you know that you have stress and you said yourself that you have felt stress. Would you agree that the most obvious sign of stress is that when you sleep poorly at night?

WIZZI: Yeah, but yeah, if you can't switch your brain off. I know that for my husband, sometimes he has to work quite late and when he gets back, if he goes so straight to bed, having only, having only finished work about an hour ago, a half an hour ago, he can't sleep because he's just, his brain is just worrying about work. So he really has to calm his brain down. And I know this as well. I have to calm my brain down for about an hour before bedtime so that sleep happens. And you're not in that kind of stressed, stressed psyche when you go to sleep because I think Sleep is also a great preventative effect, feeling the negative effects of stress. If you can get a good night's sleep, you're just in a better stead to tackle the challenge of the next day if you don't sleep. And the longer you go without good sleep and without enough deep sleep and REM sleep and all of those sleeps, the longer you try and cope with too little of all of that, the worse you're coping with things like stress gets, I think, in my opinion.

NARCIS: Okay, that's, that's interesting because I don't think I had a very good sleep night's sleep in years. I don't know, am I turning into a psychopath now or what?

WIZZI: Well, maybe you're used to it because you've got a little one, haven't you?

NARCIS: Yeah.

NARCIS: So that's, well, it's not just because of that, but even before that I cannot say I was sleeping much better. So I think in general I never really paid much attention to it, but I guess I should from now on because I was younger earlier in the years so I could just cope with it much easier. But now I guess I got in my much, much older. So I have to actually care about how I sleep. Can you imagine when I came to Denmark when I was 19, I was sleeping on a couch I found on the street and I couldn't care less. You know, that was my sleeping place. So I mean...

WIZZI: We were in a similar place and when we were 19, not geographically I was in the UK, but I was, I think I was living in a tree when I was about 18.

NARCIS: Okay.

WIZZI: And not wearing. And not wearing shoes.

NARCIS: So that's why, as you can imagine for me coming from Eastern Europe, I never really perceive stress as a real thing, honestly speaking, back there, years ago, it was just something that Western Europeans have. But yeah, now I am living in Denmark for so many years and I can see that it is a real thing, obviously, because when you have all these weird symptoms that you cannot explain, many times the doctors will just say it's stress, so deal with it somehow.

WIZZI: And I've got a smart watch and my smartwatch measures my sleep. It measures. Very clever watch. I didn't really, I didn't really know what I'd been given. When I first got given it a couple of years ago, my husband got it for me. I was like, oh, that's a nice watch. Thank you. Didn't utilize the power of the watch for a long time because I didn't realize how helpful it can be in sort of in just checking my health. And the stress sort of thing is quite funny. And there's, there's a particular thing that occurs and my watch, without fail, will set off a stress reminder and say, it's, you're a bit stressed, you know, try and do some breathing exercises or relax. And I know I need to stay away from that activity quite often because I go off the chart on the stress stressometer on my watch. So it can be, it can be useful to measure, keep an eye on your stress levels, your sleep levels, all of that.

NARCIS: What, what would you say that works? Because you can see, you can also see the newsletter in front of you. There are like five advices from the doctor. Which ones do you think, in your opinion are the ones that work the best?

WIZZI: The one that actually jumps out is stay fit. It is generally a good idea to keep fit also when it comes to stress. In part, physical activity prevents stress and it can help if you are already feeling stressed. Now, this is quite an important one for me because for a long time I was actually in a wheelchair and I had to have surgery on my ankle and I haven't been able to do. I used to be quite a gym bunny. I used to be into martial arts when I was a teenager and then and trampolining and ice skating and all these sort of sports. I was quite into fitness and keeping fit and it's always been a great stress reliever for me. I know my brother as well has to exercise vigorously, otherwise he just can't cope with his brain, you know. So I think exercise is hugely important and I've definitely noticed now I'm getting back to exercise and back to the gym and starting to increase in fitness again. I do feel better and If I'm, if I wake up in on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak, once I come out of the gym, I've had my gym session, it kind of resets me and I'm like, ah. And I feel better for the rest of the day. So I think exercise can be quite a good preventative technique of stress. If you keep, get your heart rate up, you know, really do something invigorating if you're physically able, do something that gets your heart rate up, do something that releases those endorphins. They're a natural cortisone reducer because stress is the effect of too much cortisone. So anything that can reduce those cortisone levels and yeah, there's sort of serotonin and dopamine and the happy hormones have been shown to reduce that significantly. So I do think that's a good one.

NARCIS: Okay. Staying fit. Well, that's something I'm not doing much of it unfortunately. I never really found the discipline to, to do it. That's why I went to the army here in, here in Denmark because I wanted a place where I don't have a choice. I have to do certain, certain things. But obviously I cannot go that often there and do this obviously I need to find a way to, to stay fit. Also in my, in my day to day life. I might have to be one of those people who will have to pay someone just to scream at me, keep doing it. What are you doing? Come on. Just so I do.

WIZZI: I'm actually not sure that's the way to go. I think for me it's about finding an exercise that you're excited to do, you look forward to that doesn't feel like a chore, doesn't feel like a task. You know, like for me many years ago it was yoga really. I started doing yoga when I first, first started getting back into fitness after a little wobbly hiatus a few years ago. For me when I was young it was, it was martial arts. I tried lots of sports. I never liked team sports. I'm not a very good team player. Don't tell anyone I try and get a job with. So I liked individual things. So martial arts where I'm the champion if I win, you know, and it's all down to me and like trampolining, you know, doing back semis and stuff on trampolines, that was great fun and, and hurling around an ice rink. I used to love all that kind of stuff. Organized. I don't do well at sort of organized sports. Organized Religions, I don't. I don't really take part in those things. I'm quite. I suppose I'm like the most extroverted introvert you could ever meet, really. I like my. I like my space, and I like being on my own quite a lot, which a lot of people find surprising. But it's about finding one that really fits with you and that you love. Like, I was talking to my mother, actually, and her partner's just started tai chi. He's been looking to do some exercise to improve his fitness a little bit for years and couldn't find anything he likes. But he's tried so many different things. He's finally found Tai chi, and that works for him. So that's what he's doing. And for me now, it's kind of a mixture of calming but strong sort of yoga poses and getting my heart rate up by really going for it on a cross trainer. I still can't run or anything because the ankle is still not strong enough, but. Yeah. So my advice to you would be, don't see it as something you need discipline to do. It's difficult to start doing something that becomes a routine. But once you find what you like. So I would say just try various things. If you like team sports, go join all the clubs. You know, do a, do a trial session. If you like just being in the gym with a trainer, try that. Just keep trying until you find something, because I do think it helps.

NARCIS: Of course, I. I could. I could go back to football like I used to play years ago. But...

WIZZI: Do you call it football or do you call it soccer?

NARCIS: Football? Who the hell calls it soccer?

WIZZI: Americans.

NARCIS: Yeah. Okay. That's not the real thing. That's not.

WIZZI: When we first met, you told me I needed to do better at speaking international English, and I got a bit uppity because I was like, excuse me, who invented English? What I find is a lot of internationals have quite an American sort of stylings in the way they speak, the way they write. They use zeds or Z's instead of S's. You know, it's quite American English. So that's, I think that's where the assumption that you call it soccer comes.

NARCIS: No, but you have to understand, there is not about British English versus American English. There's Europe versus US. Because in Europe, it's called football, and it's football in several languages with variations of the word. So everyone, when they will think of football in English, they will think of football. You know, nobody will use soccer. There's actually a whole wars, cultural wars online over the football versus soccer terminology, especially football fans. I was one of those hardcore, let's just say hooligans. Part of a firm when I was young.

WIZZI: Were you a lout, a football lout?

NARCIS: Sorry, what?

WIZZI: Do you know the word? Do you know the word lout?

NARCIS: Lout? No.

WIZZI: Lout. It's, it's basically another word for. It's quite a colloquialism. It's quite a British thing to say. Use the word lout instead of hooligan, but it kind of means the same thing.

NARCIS: Okay, I was lout. That was a lout. I was part of a firm when I was 16 years old. You know, it was my way of dealing with stress, I guess, like.

WIZZI: Like in the film Green Street.

NARCIS: It's pretty much like, you know, fighting the police and going over other cities and wing their stadiums and whatnot. It was with quite fine memories of my youth. You see? 

WIZZI: You reveal more and more skeletons from your closet each week. It's fascinating. Love it.

NARCIS: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's. It's. Yeah, it's not a, a big secret. I. It's part of who I am, you know, being part of football and being part of. Of. Of the whole culture around it. It's. It's. It defined me. And it's. To be honest, I had parts in life, like periods of my life when I was very much into a certain thing, and I had that part of life when football was everything for me. Like, for me, happiness was to just lie down on a football field and look up in the skies. That was, that was just happiness. But, yeah, of course, things have changed over the years. I found other things that, that were interesting. But yeah, for me, football has represented a huge part of. Of. Of defining who I am. But anyway, enough about me and my dark stories, which you, you need to give me a glass of wine before you can get more out of me.

WIZZI: We'll do that.

NARCIS: We can look further on the newsletter and we can see there is a reminder for people who have old diesel cars, older than 2009. You need to have a particle filter if you want to drive in the four large cities in Denmark and Frederiksberg, because for whatever reason, they have included in that list of large cities. But if you don't have a particle filter and you want to drive there, there's all these cameras who check your plate and if they see you don't have a particle filter installed, announced, then you get fines automatically. There was so many fines in just six weeks. 4812 people got a fine for driving with an old car in the city. Remember now, all the large cities are called environmental areas, which means you cannot go with cars that don't have a particle filter. So that's a, that's a good reminder to have. I'm not sure. Do you have a car, Louisa?

WIZZI: No.

NARCIS: No. Okay, so you don't have that issue. Well, you're from Copenhagen. I can understand you guys don't need cars.

WIZZI: Yeah, don't need a car in Copenhagen. I'm a lot happier cycling around, now I've got used to it, than I was driving, I think. So. Yeah.

NARCIS: Yeah. That's. That's.

WIZZI: No, it's nice not to have a car. It's nice not to have to pay to keep a car. It's nice not to have to worry about parking. It's nice not to. Yeah, I like the carless life, but I think if I didn't live in Copenhagen, it might be more difficult to live a carless life, you know.

NARCIS: Of course.

WIZZI: So.

NARCIS: And then if we are to look further on the newsletter, you can see that Denmark is, it decided to be more active on the international stage. So they are opening embassies in Moldova, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Malaysia. They all keep the embassy in Tanzania open. So all of you guys who have studied, like me, international relations and diplomacy. Yay. There's more jobs for us out there now, basically. Now we can all fight over those five new positions. We are just a couple hundred that have this education, but we will. Five of us will be lucky enough to get themselves some new cool jobs. Then it's also pretty cool to look at Africa. I mean, for God's sake, in Kenya, citizens got a free day like a public holiday to plant trees. And they actually, each of them got seedlings from public nurseries free. So they all have to go around and. And do that. There's an app that monitors that they actually do it so that it's not just you have to do it, we'll believe you. They have to actually monitor where they have planted it exactly. What species, what number and what hour. And it's an interesting exercise, right? Imagine if we had such an exercise in Denmark where the whole country will take free to do a society benefiting action, whatever that action could be for Denmark. Because I don't know if planting is something that makes sense for us here, but maybe something else. What could be cool? What could we take a free day in Denmark for to make a huge progress as a society?

WIZZI: Well, we could plant evergreen trees, couldn't we? Because I mean, the trouble in Denmark is you plant. There's not, not. It's not such good soil in Denmark, is it? And it's for vegetables and fruits and things like that, I've heard, which is why all our veg in the supermarkets is very seasonally offered. So just planting trees in Denmark might, there might be quite a lot of work that goes into what's going to work, what's actually going to grow. You know, they'd have to be of the evergreen variety, I think, to, to, to flourish here. I don’t know though.

NARCIS: But maybe we could have a different day. Let's imagine a day where all the citizens have to contribute in care. Hospitals, elderly care, child care. So that one day a year we all have to help the, let's just say the welfare state move forward. Let's, you know, so let's say that, depending on our skill level, instead of a nurse doing a job, you take that job and then the nurse goes and helps in an operation or a like surgery or something and so on. So I don't know, it's just a crazy idea. But in the end they do want to make all those people who are taking social benefits to go do all this society benefiting jobs like cleaning the, the beaches and the forests and supporting in one way or another. So maybe if we all citizens have this one free day where we have to do one activity, maybe it's not just so united like planting trees, like Kenya done it, but maybe in Denmark it could be much more various a task that we can accomplish in this one day society. I think I would like that. Imagine one such exercise.

WIZZI: I would like that. I think, I think as soon as you start sort of saying, right, everybody needs to plant trees or do this, I think you're going to get a lot of friction. But if you dedicate a day to services to the community and create a kind of list of all the different things you could take part in to help. So maybe it's helping kids, or it's helping the disabled, or it's helping the elderly, or it's planting trees, or it's delivering food to the homeless, or it's, you know, do you see what I mean? So if you can give people a choice, say we're going to give you this day so that you can help serve the community to encourage volunteer work. And you know, it feels good doing volunteer work. I think, I don't think anybody doesn't like the feeling you get when you truly do something for a sort of charitable cause. It’s nice to feel like you're contributing without needing something back, you know. But I do think there needs to be a choice offered of what you do because not everyone has the same skill set or interests. You know, make it interesting for each individual, make it something they would like to do instead of just, you have to do this for this.

NARCIS: I mean, if we are to thinking about, to think about climate change, a lot of areas in Denmark need to work on their digging part. So they need to raise their protection level against water. And you have seen earlier this year what happened to a lot of municipalities where they were not prepared for it. They got quite flooded. So I think maybe one thing that we could all help as a national exercise will be to literally dig the country to prepare it for, for severe floodings. I think that's, that's something that all of us could do in one way or another. There are different parts of it from planning to actually moving them. Yeah, the, the. I don't even know how to call it, but you know, to have a tool in your hand and actually make some change.

WIZZI: You could call it Denmark's Dig Day or Denmark Day to Dig. Make it sound fun in the title, have a really cool graphic, you know.

NARCIS: I mean, it's something and I mean I will enjoy for the day to break away from my daily life and just do something else. I think even mental health will be improved. As with this national exercise.

WIZZI: My brain was going along the same route as you. We were just discussing stress. This would be quite a good thing to reduce stress because my husband and I started module 2 Danish yesterday and we're both, we're both. It was, it's been coming for a while, you know, and we've been thinking, oh, how are we gonna have time for this? And blah, blah, blah. But actually we went to our first class yesterday and completely immersing our brains in something completely different to work and the stresses of our daily lives was really refreshing. And we had a great day and we made a day of it and tried to continue to speak in Danish sort of afterwards and went and had lunch and you know, it was, it was actually a really nice day and it was quite good at reducing the stress. We feel the accumulative stress of just our lives. I think everybody experiences stress in their life. Nobody gets away stress free, you know, so doing something totally different for a day a week or a day a year in this case with these initiatives that we're discussing in Denmark's dig a day, I think, yeah, they say there's an old saying, a change is as good as a rest. And I think when it comes to stress, if you can change it up and have something totally different to what you normally do for a day, I think it can really help.

NARCIS: Nice. I mean it sounds really good. I mean I keep saying that I'm gonna try to do similar things in my life but it's a bit difficult when you have company in the day, an NGO in the weekends and a newsletter in the evenings. So it's a. It's a bit mad out there but. But yeah, we'll find a way to, to make it happen as well because you have to find ways to cope with, with your daily life. But anyway, if we are to look at the, let's just say last things that we could mention from the newsletter. Keep an eye on Iceland. Remember what happened last time there was a volcanic eruption down there. You couldn't fly for a while down here around. So if you're planning some big vacation in the next one month, yeah definitely you should keep an eye out what's happening in Iceland. Of course it can suck for, for Iceland itself because there will be a, most likely whole town will be destroyed by this volcanic eruption. But also the, the clouds of ash will impact most of Europe. So yeah, hopefully not soon because it could actually kill the Christmas travels. If I look now. Oh yeah.

WIZZI: That's what I was just thinking. I'm supposed to be flying to Gatwick, London on the 20th of December.

NARCIS: So we can only hope that the eruption is in January. Although yeah it's already started to, like, bubble. A lot of roads are fissured like you could see, you can see like that the earth is not calm right now. So it could be any time now. If it's 20th of December, it's a month from now. So then you can hope that it blows up faster and because it can take at least, I don't remember last time how long it was. It was it a month. Do you remember the last eruption by any chance? No, because it was for a while. I'm just not sure how long it took for the ash in the atmosphere to. To clear out. But it was definitely for a while was much darker in Denmark. I remember those, those years was 2010, I think 2011, 12 years ago when, when that happened. But it's maybe I don't know for sure. And then the. The last thing to, to mention as well will be that you need to, you need to think more about how you could live without electricity and how long can you live without electricity? Because in May this year we were very close at having no electricity or heat if they didn't stop it last minute because there was a severe cyber-attack on our critical infrastructure. And, and those attacks are only getting stronger and better. So now Sweden, for example, is preparing their citizens how to deal with long power blackouts. They have this get ready for three days without electricity booklets and yeah, things that you can do to prepare yourself both mentally and to be ready for such a situation. There's some ideas in the Danish debate that maybe we should turn off the power for 24 hours so that we make people more aware and get them used to the idea of it and get them prepared. Because to be honest, if a cyber-attack is actually successful, it's not about two or three days, it's about a couple of weeks that the damage will to be, to fix all the damage around the country.

WIZZI: So I'm just thinking, could this be an alternative to Denmark's Digging Day? Could we have a Danish no electricity day, but a better title for it? You know, that could be a fun way to give everybody a day and nobody's allowed to use electricity for the day. Or it’s suggested that nobody uses electricity for the day. They're just. Just turn everything off to get us prepared for if that happens and we're not able to use it, you know.

NARCIS: Of course, I mean in here what will happen is that all the emergency areas like hospitals, so what, they will receive emergency generators and whatnot. So they will get something to. To stay on for the 24 hours. So don't think now that, oh my God, all those people who depend on electricity will. Will have to die. No, it's just about the, the emergency services need to be prepared to go and support areas where electricity cannot even miss for a minute. Like for example, hospitals. Of course. And I'm not sure if there's other areas, but yeah, whoever depends on electricity and cannot even live without a minute. And it's something that it depends. It's a life or death matter. Then emergency services will have to come with prepared generators to support. But in general, for us as our households, how can we survive with, with 24 hours no power? Of course it's about the fridge, it's about the freezer for once. Probably will go and see what's in the freezer. I'm not sure if I touch my freezer. I think half of the stuff in there have been there for more than a year.

WIZZI: I find mystery boxes from when I've done batch cooking. I never label the pots of whatever. And when we're coming to the end of our sort of food supplies, I go through the freezer, and the other day I found a mystery pot. And I was like, I don't think it's Bolognese. It might be a chicken stir fry, but what's that? So I just cooked it and it was delicious. I think it was a stir fry. I mean, well, I call it a stir fry. It's actually a curry, but don't tell my husband it's a curry because apparently he doesn't like curry. So I call my curry a stir fry.

NARCIS: Hopefully he's not listening, right?

WIZZI: I think he's still asleep.

NARCIS: That's good.

WIZZI: Every week he says, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna listen to your podcast this week. I think he's listened to one since we started in June. He thought it was really good, apparently, but not good enough to keep listening. But that's all right. I think it's, it's difficult to listen to your, your wife on the radio.

NARCIS: Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. What would you do for, for 24 hours with no electricity?

WIZZI: I'd play an acoustic guitar instead of an electric guitar. I would light candles. I would have a lovely time, make my own music. I can't really live without music. So if I can't listen to music on, you know, my various devices, it would be a. I'd probably just make music all day. It'd probably be really lovely for me, to be honest.

NARCIS: Nice. So actually, this 24 hours could be quite of a exercise for the whole Denmark. I mean, let's see, they are planning now to make a ministry of, of cyber defense, and they're planning to do all sorts of activities to prepare the population. I really like the, Sweden is so ahead of us. I don't like that. But it's nice to look that Sweden has done something so we can see and learn from them. And actually, the Emergency Response Association in Denmark has courses called Get Ready for Three Days. Online courses that you can go, but not just online, face to face. So if you don't understand Danish, maybe just go to one face to face and you could ask for translation. Usually they're kind enough to support you in the process. Unfortunately, there's none in English yet. Obviously we should probably pressure them to make one in English as well, because, you know, when there's an emergency, you don't have time to learn the language in a couple of minutes. Now's the time to learn Danish. There's a disaster coming. You must understand what’s happening around you.

WIZZI: Nej.

NARCIS: Yeah, that can be quite, not a nice thing to do. And the absolute last thing that we should probably mention is that if you have a young man or woman at your home, remember that all those rights they used to have about tobacco and nicotine and alcohol, they lost some of them because they decided that Denmark should maybe not be champion of Europe and who knows, of the world at teenage drinking.

WIZZI: I thought that was, that was the Danish culture.

NARCIS: That was the Danish culture, yeah. But it seems that it. It's not, it's not super, super healthy. And for the first, and for the first time ever, like literally ever, they decide that 16 to 17 year olds should only be allowed to drink up to 6% alcohol, no more 16%. So progress has been made. They cannot drink shots anymore, but they can have, I guess, very strong beer and weak wine. Is there any wine under 6%?

WIZZI: Yeah, you can get that. That kind of what pretends to be Prosecco. That's very sweet that I've been bought. I, I stupidly bought instead of Prosecco a couple of times. Had a lovely, had a lovely gulp and went, oh, what is that? So there's like a sweet 6% sparkling wine. But it's very sweet.

NARCIS: Yeah, but, yeah, so basically it's a, is a huge change in terms of alcohol content. So your teenagers can no longer drink shots, but they can still drink beer. Remember, it's illegal for you as an adult to buy them alcohol over 6%. That actually literally became illegal. It wasn’t illegal until now. So now it's illegal for adults to buy any nicotine products or alcohol over 6% for people for under 18 years old, of course. They will try to hide better the alcohol products in the supermarket so they don't put it next to stuff that teenagers buy like chips and sweets. So if you used to know a place in the supermarket where your sweet alcohol is, it might be changed now. So get, get, get ready at the interesting mission to find alcohol in the supermarket. You can say I'm really happy about the nicotine products though, they're gonna make it much, much more difficult to, to be bought. They will make it only in tobacco or mental. And also  Ecigarettes are now prohibited where smoking is prohibited. So no longer you can see those people vaping around like they, like they have no issues with, with life and new job opportunity for 15 to 17 year olds. You can get hired by the Danish safety agency as mystery shoppers and you're gonna go and try the luck of different shops and kiosks around, around the country. There's quite severe fines for, for, for a different, yeah, stores who don't comply with this, with these rules. And it's also a new job opportunity for your teenager. Mystery Shopper. I'm going to close you down.

WIZZI: Go and dubbing all your mates you drink with on a Friday night. It's like be a snitch. Go on. It's a great career path.

NARCIS: Yes. What a life.

WIZZI: I'm not sure how that's gonna go down with, with the cool kids, but.

NARCIS: Well, it's supposed to be Mystery Shopper so I guess you're supposed to be secretly doing that unless you start laughing in the middle of it. Like, you gave me a beer. How stupid are you?

WIZZI: Well, it's a good, it will be a good deter, deterring measure, you know, for those shops that don't play by the rules so much if they know mystery shoppers are going to be allowed, it's more likely they're gonna behave and enforce the rules.

NARCIS: So I guess it's quite unfortunate. But it seems that even though we have these regulations for years, nobody really bothered with them. And to be honest, I, I, when I was 19 years old in Denmark, I don't remember once for them to ask me my age or something and I was barely 19 so I don't know, maybe I was looking old enough. But what can I say? I have seen also younger children in front of me who bought alcohol or cigarettes. Nobody cared. And I'm pretty sure they were 12 years old.

WIZZI: Yeah, I've seen some 12 year olds smoking in the streets and she said, ah, yeah, okay. But I can't really judge them because I'm pretty sure that was me.

NARCIS: Yeah, okay, fair enough. But I mean at least make it hard for them, you know, so if they get the cigarettes in one way or another, they went through all the trouble to get it. Good for them. But don't make it so simple. Like literally just take it from the thing and just get out and be like, oh. Cuz I mean in all the American movies that you see, right, you see them trying so hard and it's such a victory when you get anything out of the store. While in here you literally just go to the store and nobody cares.

WIZZI: Where's the challenge? I want, I want doing illegal things to be challenging

NARCIS: Otherwise they're not illegal and they go for more hardcore stuff, you know. So if you make this one hard, they will maybe let go of more challenging stuff. Because you see, Tik Tok is a endless source of inspiration, unfortunately. And there's all sort of weird stuff coming out of that, let's just say poisonous world of the world. But yeah, I think. I think that was it for today, right? We kind of went through most of the, most important topics. There are several others, of course, in the newsletter, so don't hesitate to, to read.

WIZZI: Have you got a busy day ahead, Narcis?

NARCIS: Yeah, well, I guess. I mean, we have to publish the newsletter soon enough and, yeah, see if there's anything more done to be done there. And then I just sleep. Nah, what am I saying? I cannot sleep. I have a two year old at home.

WIZZI: And you've never been good asleep, have you?

NARCIS: I don't know. It's just. I have no idea what today will be. So we'll see.

WIZZI: Well, whatever it is, enjoy it. It's been lovely to see you again today. Thank you all for tuning in. We hope you found this podcast informative, interesting and of value. We'll be back next week on your favorite podcast platform. Just search Last Week in Denmark. Thank you very much for listening and goodbye for now.