Q&A, Living remote in the Italian Alps

Right on. It's a beautiful day. It's a rainy week, which is really good for the soil. It's been very dry and now the sun is sort of peeking through. I think it's going to rain again later. There's a fresh pack of snows just on those peaks there, covered with some clouds. So I guess during this Q&A the view is going to change quite a bit, which might be nice. Well, I'm living here full-time now and I'm planning to live here for a few years and what the future brings, I don't know. I'm still a nomad, so for me it's very much a project of building and renovating this place. So I'll be here definitely the coming years and I don't plan to sell it. I think I'd buy this for life, because I love this place and I think I'll keep loving it. It's the same with my apartment in Amsterdam, which I bought when I was 27, 11 years ago. When I arrived there, it had so much charm. It was a very old apartment, like there was an old guy living there. I love that place and I think I'll keep it, you know, because a house becomes a home over time. Only over time, only when you build memories somewhere. So yeah, I think it will be beautiful here too, to have a place where you build up memories and then it becomes a home. But you know, in the future, I don't know, I don't look far ahead. This is a project for me for the coming two, three years, maybe longer, I don't know, we'll see. So the plan is there are going to be two individual cabins, like I'm working on the small one right now. And I want them to be individual cabins, because they're both big enough to be complete houses, sort of, for one or two persons, you know. So one I could rent out, or one could be a studio or a working place, and then the other one I could live. I think it's flexible when they both have bedrooms and bathrooms. I have three brothers. I grew up in a family with four boys. We grew up in the south of the Netherlands. My father is a minister in the Dutch Protestant Church, but was a later part of his career, he was a landscaper when we were children. And he had a nursery in the garden. We had a big garden and we always worked there as children. It was a great place to grow up and I have very good memories to that. And my oldest brother Keijan is a carpenter, so I call him often for asking how to do things. Second brother Anna, he's a landscaper too, and I got the chainsaw from him. And then my youngest brother Siebren is a videographer and animator. And my mother was the caretaker and the technical and financial manager of the house. When something has to be fixed, she's probably that person. That's my father, that's my mother, my youngest brother Siebren with his girlfriend at the time, my oldest brother Keijan with his wife Tineke, and that daughter Jerozen, and that's Anna. And he has a child too, but this is a bit of an older photo with his spouse Marika. Yes, I always have very good memories to my family. I don't see them very often, but I mean, thanks to smartphones and WhatsApp, it's so easy to be in contact. And I see them a few times a year. There is no toilet yet. I'm going to build an outhouse and obviously there won't be a toilet in the cabin. I'm not sure if it's going to be a septic system or a composting toilet. Like a septic system is a lot of work and I haven't figured it out yet how to build that on a slope. With all the houses here, I mean, nobody lives here full time, but they're all holiday houses and they usually have their own septic system. But how to build it is quite complicated. Everything I find about it is on flat land. And so the, how do you call that? The leach field is quite different, I think, than when you were on a slope. But it is a good solution here because there is a lot of water. We live in the mountains, so there's a lot of circulation. The water just comes straight from the mountain. So I think in a place where there's a lot of water, it makes sense to have a septic system. And then the houses are, they've been there for more than a hundred years and they're going to be there for quite a few more. So it makes sense to have running water through the toilet. Composting is very common nowadays, but I think it's something more for more temporary solutions like tiny houses or, I don't know yet. I have to figure it out. Most of what I do, I've learned myself. I'm a graphic designer. That's what I've studied. And that's what most of my career has been. I've worked in design firms and later freelanced. But I've always loved building, you know. And so I educate myself. I just read a lot and just try it out. Just start working and figure it out. And sometimes I ask my brother and I ask other people how to do things and I'll just figure it out. I think we live an amazing time, you know, when everything is online. You can Google everything and YouTube. Because I remember when I worked at a design firm, it was about 12 years ago. I was a junior designer and I wanted to learn more about 3D visualizing, which would really benefit the company because we need a lot of visuals and we had no one at the company who was able to do that. So I wanted to learn that. So I asked the creative director, but she said, yeah, yeah, it would be a great idea. But right now there's no opportunity. There's no budget for it or something. So I didn't learn it. It was all before the YouTube time. And now when I want to learn something like software, for example, Sketchup, I'm drawing up the houses in all of the detail in Sketchup. And I just learned that through YouTube, which is amazing. You don't need a school anymore and it's all for free. You just need to spend some time on it and just start doing it. And with building, with carpentry, with plumbing, all the things I'm doing right now, you just look it up on YouTube and you have to study. And not just watch one video, watch several videos. And with carpentry, it's different in different countries and you have to read the comments too. Because usually a lot of craftsmen are in the comments who actually know how to do things. There's a lot of people making videos like me who are not professionals and they tell, they show you how to do things, which is not always the proper way. So I read the comments, I watch other videos and that's how you learn a lot of things. I got a trail cam recently and I've put it up here on the path. And on the first night I captured, the first shot was a rabbit and the second shot was a small wolf walking by. I've also captured a wolf, no, a fox, I mean. And yeah, I'm putting it up there. I should check it, I think it's still running right now. I mean, we're living in Europe, so Europe is very much domesticated, so there's no bears. There's bears in Romania and I think they're also coming in the Alps now. But there's not so much wildlife here. There's deer I've seen here, there's chamois, badgers, you know, foxes. That's basically it. There's not much here and I haven't seen much yet. The first time I was here I saw a deer, but you know, the more people that come here, which is not so much, the less wildlife there will be. During the week there's almost nobody. I see nobody here, but during the weekend I see more hikers. And when it's getting summer, there will be more people in the mountains. But the wolves that keep me awake sometimes are just really now and then when I hear them, because I hear them howl and that's amazing. So there's wolves here and those are amazing. So I'm hoping to see one in real life. Yesterday night I think I saw one, but it could have been a fox too, because I was going outside and I had my headlamp on and then you see the eyes and it was walking. It stopped and it looked at me and then it moved on again. So it might have, I think it was a fox because they're less shy. Wolves don't come close to humans. The one time that I captured a wolf was at around 3am. You know, that's when most people are asleep. And I've captured it two times. It was around that time and the foxes are here more often. They come closer to humans. The wolves are usually over there in that village or around that area. That's where I hear them and higher up on the mountains where there's less people. I don't know, I think it's a set of life events that led me to here. I talk about this in my book in the preface of two years on a bike, because I think my bike journeys influenced it. You know, during my bike journeys I figured out living in nature and that was, I think, the beautiful part of these two journeys from Amsterdam to Singapore and the Americas. You know, I love the silence. I love being alone. I love nature. But I've always lived in cities. You know, during my 20s I lived in Amsterdam and I've lived for a short period in Singapore and New York and in Barcelona. Cities were always exciting to me as a graphic designer. I love just art and the creative. Meeting people, going out, you know. But as I got older, in my 30s, I just longed to be more in nature. So I'm very glad I made this decision to have a place here in this beautiful part of nature. And I don't miss the city at all. You know, sometimes I go to the city and yeah, then it's nice. I mean, the city will always be interesting. So I go there from time to time, but then for a day or two it's enough. I have a very simple setup. A DSLR on the tripod, which is filming right now. It's a Sony a7 III and I have a drone. That's all I have. The drone is a Mavic Air 2S. I recently upgraded. I had chapter 1 to 7 of this series shot with a Sony a7S II and a Mavic Air, which I also had for my bike journeys. And yeah, they're all great cameras. Cameras nowadays are just amazing, you know. The pixel quality is just so good. You know, it's up to us to make beautiful films with it. So it's a very simple setup that works for me. The camera is always with me. So I'm very much used to just put it there and turn it on. When I'm working, I forget. I immediately forget that it's on. So it feels very natural and it captures a lot of footage, and I have a fast workflow. I don't back up. I throw everything away because there's so much content I shoot. It's constantly recording and then when I edit, after I've made the edit, I back up the edit of course. The final video and the rest of everything I throw away. So that's how that goes. The drone shots, I get questions about that. Flying a drone when driving a car or riding a bicycle is something I should not recommend doing. But I prepare the shot, right. So I fly up the drone while I'm parked. I frame the shot and I think what I want to do. And I just have to hold the throttle, but I don't look at the screen, so I can focus on the driving. And usually a shot never takes longer than 15 or 20 seconds, so when I have to really actually fly the drone, I don't drive. And I know the roads very well here and there's no traffic, so that's very important too. But still, yeah, you should be careful. No, not really. I don't think isolated is the right word. I mean, it's more sort of liberated. Yeah, it's just beautiful to be here. I don't feel alone because I like to be alone. And also because we're so connected through internet. And I have my phone with me. I have internet here, so it's easy to stay in touch. And I enjoy being on my own. I think that's just different types of people. You know, most people are very social. They like to live together. And there's some people that stray from the herd, right. I think it's always good to be alone. And I think you can also train it to enjoy being alone. I think it's good to go for, to spend some time in nature on your own because it's beautiful. And if you like to be with people, it's also nice to come back to your family or to your partner or to the people you are living with. But yeah, it is, it works for me. Sometimes as friends here with dogs, and I'd love to have a dog here. I think it would be amazing. But I also love to be free. And I love to travel and to be independent like I've been most of my life. So and then a dog is more difficult. So I'm not sure about it. Maybe cats are easier, but I'm a little bit allergic to cats. So if I get too close to them, it's not good. But cats are easier to maintain. If I go for groceries, the cats will be fine here. About animals, I'd like to have sheep here or some goats. I mean, it would be amazing. And chicken, I think it would be amazing. I think it's something for the future because now I'm really focused on building. I'm doing a little bit of gardening. And the landscaping is also part of the building here now. So I'm more focused on that. And having also animals is just, the building is going to be too slow. So it might be something for the future. But I'd love to have like some goats. There's beautiful goats here in the valley. So and it's also quite common to borrow cows or goats for the summer, for example, so you don't have to care for them and work with them the whole year round. So it might be interesting to do it as a seasonal thing. But I have a lot of land, you know, like I have a meadow down there. So I could keep animals also here on the property to keep the grass short. And it would be fun to have some animals around. There's a tower on top of the hill of a provider called Tim. My Dutch phone doesn't connect with it. But I bought a SIM card. And yeah, sometimes it's good. But the last week, it's been very slow. Like it took me more than 24 hours to upload a video. So it doesn't always work really well. When I walk to the top of the hill, my international phone works too, because it connects with the valley. But it's a slow connection. I'm thinking of getting like something like Starlink. So you have satellite internet, but it's expensive. But it will be good for uploading videos and just staying connected. You know, it becomes increasingly easier. The coming years, it will be easy to have internet anywhere on the planet. I mean, that's where we're going. So it becomes easier to live off grid and still function, still be connected and even work remotely from anywhere, which is, I think, amazing. Let's see at the comments. There were so many questions. I cannot answer all of them, of course. Do you ever have days when you do absolutely nothing? Just relax, rewire? No, I always work. Sometimes more than ever, than other times. I like to work. I like to research things. I like to do things. But I enjoy the silence and the quietness too, you know. I have coffees and lunch here with this view. So I think it's a good balance. I work in a very beautiful place. So then it's nice to work. Please talk about the local flora, types of trees, plants, flowers. I'm learning about all of these things. But the forests here are beech and birch mostly and chestnut. But there's not much chestnut on this side of the mountain. There's larch as well, but not so much. There's not so much pine here. And spruce. On the other side there's a large forest. Pine, yeah, I think you have to go higher up. Or in some other valleys you have more pine forests. So that's what there is here. It's mostly birch here on the property, which is beautiful, I think. And it's good for mushrooms. That's the word. There's a lot of mushrooms here. So in autumn, I remember when I came here in October, there was a lot of people with baskets also on the property looking for edible mushrooms. Because they grow under the birch trees. Short-term renovation plans. Yeah, I can talk about that. So I'm working on the cabin. The crane is finished. I'm working on the small cabin and the roof is the first thing. But I have to wait for the building permit because the geometer forgot to ask about it. Which, I mean, maybe it was my fault because I didn't ask too many times. Like here you have to, if you're working with people you have to ask multiple times to start working. Because yeah, sometimes it's slow. So I have to wait for that. But it might come very soon. And I'm also waiting for the roof window. I ordered it. I have to pick up some wood. I'm waiting for a few things and I want to have everything prepared before I start on the roof. And first I thought I could do the roof whilst the inner cabin is in there. But because I need to do the roof light, I need to work from the inside and also for the chimney. The building needs to be empty. So the inner cabin is going to go over there and I will live in there for the coming months whilst I'm working on the house. So I have to first build the inner cabin there and the outhouse I'm going to build too. So I think it's going to take another two or three weeks or maybe a month before I start working on the cabin. The work on the cabin is going to be a slow process because I want to do everything right. Because I realize when you're working on a property like this and you're learning all these kind of things, is that a lot of jobs you do twice. Because I'm living here too. For example the solar panels. I did a quick job putting them up because I needed to have electricity from day one. And now I learned that the angle needs to change. Especially for winter. For now it's fine. So I have to kind of rebuild it, tweak it. And that's worth a lot of things. Also with the outdoor shower I'm thinking I'm not sure if I like it how it is now. So you change a few things. And the outdoor shower, the inner cabin, it's not so important because it's temporary. But everything on the cabins needs to be done right. Because it's preserving a historical building. Everything I'm adding to it, I want it to be fitting. So I'm looking for antique stuff. Doors for example and furniture and fittings. They need to be curated right. I need to select all these things. And it takes time to find the right things. Is the ghost town for sale? Yes and no. So in that ghost town over there, there's one property for sale which is three small cabins. But they're just too small to do something with it. One of them is a ruin. To buy an entire ghost town is very difficult because every house has different owners. That's just how it goes. There were people living there 50 years ago or 100 years ago and of course there were different owners. There's never a ghost town owned by one person. It's very difficult to obtain some properties because people inherited it and they might live somewhere else. Part of the family might live in the United States and they have to make a decision together to sell it. And sometimes there's a dispute in the family about it. So it's very hard to get all the properties. I know that because one I've been on a property like Gash in the Ossola valley. He got a complete ghost town and almost complete. I think he's still trying to buy one or two houses. But he grew up in the area and he's Italian. He speaks the language and he knows the area and the neighborhood and the community very well. So it makes it already a lot easier. But yeah all of these houses here there's a lot of them are for sale and are on the website like a website called Idealista. And other houses might be for sale but you have to just ask the owners. So if you like this area or if you like a certain area in the Alps and you want to buy something I think the best way is just to go there. Spend some time there and get to know the area and ask around. If you see an old ruin or an old house where nobody lives and you think like oh I'd love to love to buy this. But there's no sign. You can figure out who the owners are and they might be willing to sell it. Why don't you sell your videos to Netflix? Well thanks for the compliment. But I think no I like YouTube. The reason why I started to do YouTube is because I wanted to learn from the community and create a community to get to know local people here in the mountains. And also to just learn from the community like by sharing the project and to get recommendations and ideas. So YouTube is I think is amazing because of the comment section. And I don't respond much because it's just too much. I get like a thousand comments on every video right now because and it's just too much. But I read everything or almost everything. I try to catch up on it. And I appreciate that you know because I think there's I love reading other people's stories and reflections on what they see and the ideas they have for the property. And that's very often the people know better how to do things than I do. So I learn from that too. So I think I think it's amazing how connected we are. So keep it coming. I appreciate it.