Europe Trip 2025 Review – DT 337.5

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dirt Talk by BuildWitt – Europe Trip 2025 Review (DT 337.5)

Release Date: May 14, 2025

In episode DT 337.5 of Dirt Talk hosted by Aaron Witt of BuildWitt, Aaron, along with his co-hosts Jack and TJ, recount their extensive trip to Europe in 2025. This detailed and engaging episode delves into their experiences at the prestigious Bauma Trade Show in Germany, various construction and demolition projects, cultural explorations in Belgium and the Netherlands, and a poignant visit to Rome during a significant historical moment. Below is a comprehensive summary capturing all key discussions, insights, and memorable moments from the trip.

---

1. Journey to Bauma: Preparation and Arrival

Aaron Witt kicks off the episode by describing their springtime visit to Europe, highlighting the advantage of milder weather which made air conditioning a non-issue.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [00:30]: "Air conditioning was a non-issue."
• Jack [00:32]: "Your room in Italy was ridiculous. Felt like an igloo."

The trio settled primarily in Germany, arriving in Munich early in the morning before heading straight to the Bauma Trade Show.

Notable Quote:

• Aaron Witt [01:20]: "We flew in, flew out, slept in nine different beds. It’s logistically complex for most people, but manageable for us."

---

2. Experience at Bauma Trade Show

Bauma, hailed by the hosts as one of the best trade shows in the construction industry, impressed them with its community-driven atmosphere and massive scale, attracting 800,000 attendees in a week.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [02:43]: "I think it's the best trade show in the world in the industry."
• TJ [03:05]: "8% of people that go to the show. It's amazing."

Despite the overwhelming size, with 18 halls spread over approximately 20 acres, Aaron and his team focused on showcasing major machinery from top manufacturers like Hitachi, Komatsu, and Caterpillar.

Notable Quotes:

• Jack [04:27]: "Electric wheelbarrows were sick."
• Aaron Witt [05:32]: "Zeppelin hosted us. They’re amazing hosts."

They encountered various challenges, including the extensive walking required and managing their energy levels during the long days.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [10:22]: "We should have planned things a little bit differently."
• TJ [11:05]: "If we weren't there, we would have been 100% down."

---

3. Post-Bauma Tours: Salt Mine and Hagedorn Demolition Project

a. Salt Mine Tour in Bernberg, Germany

The trip took a positive turn when Aaron and the team visited a salt mine in Bernberg, offering a unique behind-the-scenes look at K+S operations. They marveled at the underground mining operations and the innovative use of salt, which dissolves harmlessly in the body, eliminating the need for respirators.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [20:02]: "She was great. A 10 out of 10 tour."
• TJ [22:07]: "They don’t need a respirator because it dissolves within your body."

b. Hagedorn Demolition Project near Hanover

Their encounter with the Hagedorn demolition company was a highlight, showcasing efficient and meticulously planned demolition of a bridge. The team praised the seamless coordination and impressive machinery used in the project.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [40:25]: "A textbook example of European demolition."
• Jack [41:23]: "It was really efficient. One guy doing rebar, one guy munching concrete."

---

4. Cultural Exploration: Belgium and the Netherlands

a. Brussels, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam

Traveling from Germany, the hosts ventured into Belgium, spending a night in Brussels before heading to the dynamic cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. They appreciated Amsterdam's scenic canals and vibrant culture, despite encountering typical urban challenges like trash.

Notable Quotes:

• TJ [43:10]: "The prettiest city I've been in."
• Aaron Witt [43:38]: "The canals make it look gorgeous."

b. Dutch Caterpillar Dealer Visit

In the Netherlands, Aaron and his team visited Pawn, a prominent Dutch Caterpillar dealer, exploring advanced battery-powered construction projects. They were particularly impressed by the innovative approaches to sustainability and efficiency in construction machinery.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [46:44]: "They have the biggest battery-powered construction project in the world."
• TJ [48:53]: "They charge three times a day. While he's eating."

---

5. Final Stop: Rome Amidst a Historic Moment

Their final destination was Rome, coinciding with the passing of the Pope. This unexpected event added a layer of solemnity to their trip.

a. Encounter at the Vatican

Aaron had the fortunate experience of viewing the Pope's casket at St. Peter's Basilica, navigating the massive crowds and stringent security with the help of Google Translate.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [56:28]: "The airport was packed. More police, military police, more soldiers."
• Jack [62:13]: "You got to the Vatican."

b. Visit to Despae and Jumbo Machine

The visit to Despae in Rome introduced the hosts to one of the largest demolition machines in Europe, the 6015 Jumbo. Despite communication barriers, the team successfully documented the operation, highlighting the machine’s immense size and capability.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [56:57]: "It's probably the biggest demolition machine in Europe."
• Jack [58:55]: "The drone made the 390 look small next to the Jumbo."

c. Air Force One Sightseeing

On their way back to the United States, the hosts had an exclusive glimpse of Air Force One, marking a memorable conclusion to their European adventure.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [64:05]: "That was the closest I've ever been to Air Force One."

---

6. Travel Tips and General Observations

The trio shared valuable insights and tips for future travelers based on their experiences:

• Air Conditioning: Ensure accommodations have functioning air conditioning, especially when traveling in hotter months.

  Notable Quotes:

  • TJ [65:00]: "Prepare yourself for potentially hot nights."
  • Aaron Witt [66:29]: "Get a place with air conditioning."

• Biking in European Cities: Embrace the bike-friendly environments of European cities but be cautious and respectful on busy intersections.

  Notable Quotes:

  • TJ [65:39]: "People are so used to bikes. You can ride without feeling at risk."
  • Aaron Witt [65:23]: "Most everybody's a cyclist."

• Language Barriers: Utilize translation apps like Google Translate to overcome communication challenges in non-English speaking countries.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Aaron Witt [57:14]: "We speak the entire trip through Google Translate."
  • Jack [57:33]: "He just spit out 'Do you want espresso?'"

---

7. Conclusion and Upcoming Content

Wrapping up their Europe trip, Aaron expressed excitement about the upcoming YouTube videos documenting their adventures, particularly the salt mine tour and Hagedorn demolition project.

Notable Quotes:

• Aaron Witt [67:11]: "We're excited about the videos, especially salt mine."
• Aaron Witt [67:24]: "Thank you for listening and we will see everybody on the next one."

The hosts extend their gratitude to everyone who supported their journey and encourage listeners to stay tuned for the visual content that complements this detailed review.

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This episode of Dirt Talk offers listeners an immersive and informative recount of Aaron, Jack, and TJ’s European expedition, blending professional insights with personal anecdotes. Whether you're in the construction industry or simply an enthusiast, this review provides valuable perspectives on international trade shows, cutting-edge machinery, and the cultural nuances of traveling through Europe.

Transcript

[Aaron Witt]

Europe 2025.

[Jack]

Europe, Europe 2025.

[Aaron Witt]

We went in the spring this time, so air conditioning was a non issue.

[TJ]

Much better. I wake up in the morning, my room is at a nice crispy 55.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack]

Your room in Italy was ridiculous.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

We walked past your room and it felt like an igloo.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, because we had the mini splits in our rooms there. So you can let it really go. Yeah.

[Jack]

Like 63.

[Aaron Witt]

Air conditioning, non issue.

[TJ]

Because take advantage of that when I have it.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Using half of. That's why. That's why Spain just lost power.

[Jack]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Jack was using it all for air conditioning.

[TJ]

I was there cranking it at 16 degrees Celsius.

[Jack]

Probably had it 22.

[Aaron Witt]

That was. That's criminal. Air conditioning was a non issue. It was a little less logistically complex, I would say. We slept in nine different beds, which to normal people would probably be logistically complex. But we went to, I mean, last time, what we did eight countries. This time we did four. Four.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Yeah. We spent eight, nine days in Germany.

[Aaron Witt]

A bulk majority in Germany.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So yeah, we flew in, we flew, we left Wednesday afternoon, which got us into Munich. Where did we fly through D.C. d.C. So we flew through D.C. munich.

[TJ]

It's seven in the morning.

[Aaron Witt]

Got into Munich in the morning. And then we went from Munich. Right. To Bauma.

[TJ]

Yes.

[Aaron Witt]

Which was. Was not ideal, but I've done that a few times and it's. It makes for a long day, but yeah.

[Jack]

Kept us awake.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah. You have to stay awake. You can't go to the hotel and check in.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So it's like, what else are you gonna do? That day was nice because I was able to meet a bunch of people. But that started our four days at Balma this year, which was too much.

[Jack]

Yeah. We should.

[TJ]

Three days too many.

[Jack]

Yeah. Two days later, stay the next day.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, I would say two days would be good. We learned some lessons. Y the show is extraordinary.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

I can't say enough good things about 99.

[Jack]

Glad we went.

[TJ]

8% of people that go to the show. It's amazing.

[Aaron Witt]

I think, I think it's the best trade show in the world in the industry.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

I think it's so much cooler than the American shows because it's very community and family driven, which I think is a no brainer. But we just in America haven't figured that one out yet. They had 800,000 people come through in the week. So wild how big it is.

[Jack]

Yeah. Why one day when they were letting their kids in for free was crazy.

[TJ]

That was me.

[Aaron Witt]

The family day.

[Jack]

That was worse than Disneyland.

[TJ]

Me and TJ's first time. And like I knew it was big going into it, but like, man, like, if you wanted, if you wanted to do. If you wanted to like start in one corner. It's three rows of buildings and like it was six buildings per row.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So three by six.

[TJ]

Quick maths. 18. 18 total halls. And then there's the outside, which is also like. I don't know, put this in acre terms. Probably like 20 acres.

[Aaron Witt]

No, 10.

[TJ]

10 acres.

[Aaron Witt]

Oh, no, more, More.

[TJ]

More.

[Aaron Witt]

I mean it would from, from. We didn't. I didn't even go to the back corner of the back corner. The outs output from like the back corner of one outdoor spot to the other corner of the outdoor spot. At least a. I mean that's like a 45 minute walk.

[Jack]

Yeah. Electric wheelbarrows were at.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jack]

Those things were sick.

[TJ]

It's electric.

[Aaron Witt]

I mean it's, it's, it's. It's giant.

[TJ]

Huge. Like if you want. Yeah. If you wanted to like start in one corner of the show, one building and walk through the whole thing, every building. And outside it would genuinely take like six hours.

[Aaron Witt]

And that's just if you're walking the.

[TJ]

Whole time walking, maybe stopping every now and then to look at stuff. But.

[Aaron Witt]

But you're not really hanging out though. Like there's just so much.

[TJ]

Anything you could imagine that has to do with construction. Is there? From machines to scaffolding to.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Drill bits to hydraulic hose fittings.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Work tools.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Cranes.

[Jack]

I was doing the inside shooting for most of it and it took me three days to just capture all the cool stuff. And there was probably 400, 500 boost worth of not cool stuff. So.

[Aaron Witt]

But there were. I. We're there four days.

[Jack]

Cool.

[Aaron Witt]

Like I probably saw 20, I'd say of the show.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Because we were focused on actually some of the bigger gear. Yeah.

[TJ]

Yeah. Price like 30.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So you have like the main manufacturers. You have Hitachi, Komatsu, Caterpillar. We were with Zeppelin. Zeppelin hosted us. He huge shout out to Zeppelin. They're amazing hosts. So helpful.

[TJ]

Simon.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Really hooked us up. Lieber, is big John Deere working? I mean there's. Every manufacturer in the world. Is there. Zeppelin was a huge help though because if we had to walk around with our backpacks the whole time, that would have sucked.

[Jack]

That would have sucked so bad.

[Aaron Witt]

Pass like having an area to just at least set our stuff down and. And it was kind of nice because you could they have like Each booth has all the machines, but then there's all these secret offices everywhere that are all temporary.

[TJ]

Especially the big ones.

[Aaron Witt]

Especially the big ones. Like the, like the, like in cat, you don't really. You can't really tell there's anything else but the show, but there's like a whole labyrinth behind the scenes. Like we only saw a small part of it. And then they had like the Main Zeppelin meeting area and then Caterpillar had a section and then they had like the whole backstage section.

[Jack]

Yeah, the backstage section was. That was nice.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. And then they had like a little office in the middle of the hall where the CAT command stuff was. And I didn't even realize that was.

[Jack]

An office until somebody pops their head.

[Aaron Witt]

Until someone pops out of it. It's like, wow, there's people everywhere. But it was, it was really nice.

[Jack]

It was well run. Caterpillar did a really good job running it.

[Aaron Witt]

Beautiful. Yeah.

[Jack]

Like, I wouldn't. If I was there, I would never notice that there was anything going on behind the scenes. It would have just been.

[Aaron Witt]

No.

[Jack]

An experience. Which was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

No. So I, I could not recommend Bama more to anybody attending in the industry, outside the industry.

[TJ]

If you have an opportunity, I wouldn't like, I wouldn't say it's like worth, like throwing down everything and going to see, but if you have an opportunity to go. Yeah, it's definitely worth.

[Aaron Witt]

But I think for business owners in America, it's well worth it.

[TJ]

Business to see 100%.

[Aaron Witt]

Just. Yeah.

[TJ]

I'm just saying, like you're your buddy, like an enthusiast.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Unless you're just trying to spend money. Sure. But. And you want to go to Germany. But if you have an opportunity like for 99.8% of people, we're very spoiled when it comes to shows like this.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Because we see so much and like we see like, oh, 7,000. I saw that last year in Australia.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

So it's like it's to us, it's not as. It's still cool, but it's like they're usually only so cool when they're sitting still.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, it's just, it's just not our thing. It's really like most, most people there will never see a PC7000.

[TJ]

Exactly.

[Aaron Witt]

That's fucking wild to see a PC7000 is wild.

[Jack]

Even 9400 over there, like it's smaller excavator. It's still insane.

[Aaron Witt]

Most of those machines you're never going to see up close. You're never going to be able to stand in a bucket of a 992 loader. So for, yeah, for most everybody, that is the closest you're going to get to big machines, period, ever in your life. Whereas for us, like our mo, I'm not as much excited, I'm not so much excited about the machine. Excited about what the machine does.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So 7,000. Cool. I can appreciate it.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

But watching it on a bench in Queensland, Australia, swinging a 40 cubic meter bucket, slamming out trucks with overburden. That's where it's at. Yeah.

[Jack]

That is the fresh yellow paint on the one we saw.

[Aaron Witt]

Oh. Just a few weeks after commissioning.

[Jack]

Brand spanking now.

[Aaron Witt]

Let's go.

[Jack]

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it's good as a business owner to go to Obama, especially if you're from America. See how Europeans do some things because sometimes they just do some things just better than us.

[Aaron Witt]

Oh, they're. They're just better. They're. Every time I go to Europe I'm like, yeah, they're just, they're just better. And I, and I know people from America argue with me on that. I'm like, no, no, you haven't seen what they do. They're better than us. They're a lot better than us.

[Jack]

Demolition. They are much better.

[Aaron Witt]

Way better. So, yeah, I. Baumo's great. Not great from a content standpoint, just because it's not our thing.

[Jack]

If we got that move out, it would have been. It would have probably saved it.

[Aaron Witt]

But yeah, so that, that was the show. Then we hung out Sunday night. At that point we were pretty burnt out of just being there. So in hindsight I would have planned things a little bit differently, but we wanted to get the machines moving out. The last time they did Bauma, they were moving them out same night pretty quick. Whereas this time they took their time and they moved out much later in the night. But we had to travel the whole next week, so I didn't feel like staying up all night. I just didn't think that was. And, and I don't know, it's like should have.

[TJ]

Probably should have accounted for the hundred year.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

We got screwed by the anniversary.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. And so the party and champagne.

[TJ]

Party and champagne. So you should have thought about that.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, I. It's always like the decision because we're all the way in fucking Germany. Do we just not sleep and do we just hang out and get it? But then, but then there's like. Because you guys know this, it's some trips we've gone pretty fucking hard and.

[Jack]

Then there's like no gas in the tank.

[Aaron Witt]

There's no gas in the tank. So I was expecting a pretty fast paced few days after that and was like, all right, they're not going very fast. It's like 8 or 9pm I think.

[TJ]

If we weren't there, if we weren't already there for three days prior, I think we all would have been 100 down.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Just stay as long as we needed to.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

But like, I think, I think we're all like. I think we're all like at the point where I was like, dude, give me the out of Balma.

[Jack]

Yeah, it's walking through and you're getting touched by so many people indirectly. You're like, okay, okay.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, there's so many. It's just mentally exhausting.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Like the Saturdays, but you couldn't walk.

[Jack]

Yeah. On the day where they. That. That's the coolest part about Obama is they let the people in for free. If some kids in for free, I.

[Aaron Witt]

Don'T know if it's free, but it's like way cheap.

[TJ]

Very. It's like €10.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

15 years.

[Jack]

Way cheaper. And then the show is like four times. You thought it was bad the day.

[TJ]

Before, which is a crazy concept because it's like, well, how do we get. How do we get more young people interested in the industry? Yeah, well, we actually let them come to the shows and see the cool machines and like they probably two to.

[Jack]

One kids to parents there. Like that day, there's so many kids there, it's like, well, I don't know why we don't do that.

[Aaron Witt]

All the manufacturers are spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on this event. The amount of money dropped.

[TJ]

The amount of money Bear has an entire dropped on their building with 2,000 employees.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. They spent six months building a three story building. Like I think you guys thought it was like a tent before you came. And then you, you're walking inside the.

[Jack]

Building, you're like, I thought it was a permanent structure. And then we were on the third floor and you're like, oh, it's. This is. They just temporarily built this. I was like, just for Bama. I was like, no fucking way.

[Aaron Witt]

Just for Bama.

[TJ]

Yeah. Six months up, three months down.

[Aaron Witt]

But you're spending all this time and money on doing this. Your customers have already been through. You've already done your business. Why not invite the community to enjoy it and take. Take in it? Like, what the heck's going on? I just, I don't understand.

[Jack]

Especially like at a place like Conexpo, you'd think that like they have all these shows, like Caterpillar has her outside booth. And so you'd think, like they would want people to come in for a discounted rate.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. But nope, full price, baby.

[TJ]

My next bill, you have to. You can't even be under 18.

[Aaron Witt]

Nope, nope. I had it. I had some guy wanted to bring his kid and I was just like, I would just go security guard to security guard until you find one that's gonna let you in. And that's what he did. And he got in and his kid had a great time. And it's like, yeah, yeah. And no one's gonna sit around, be like, oh, man, these kids ruining it.

[TJ]

I can't do my business.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, come on. Like, like again, they're spending all this money to bring mining machines to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

[TJ]

It's also like the people who are actually at these shows who are actually like doing legitimate business, like we said, are always in those back room offices.

[Aaron Witt]

Or they're in the.

[TJ]

They're in the offices or the conference rooms. They're not just like standing outside in the hall like doing a multi million dollar deal right in front of the machine.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like this, like kids getting in there. Yeah. They're doing it by the tire of the 798.

[TJ]

Like, it's like, no. Like if there's a slightest interest of actually doing business, they take them to the VIP area.

[Aaron Witt]

Oh.

[Jack]

And then.

[Aaron Witt]

And in Vegas, they're doing the business at like Caesar's Palace.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Fucking suite. Or at some fancy fucking.

[TJ]

So it's like, there's no reason. It's like before. Because last year, my next bow is my first time going to that too. And before I knew all this, I was like, I was telling my buddies, I was like, oh, you guys should come down. And we can. And you'd be able to see. Like, we can. I'll stay an extra day. And we can. You can see these giant machines that you'll never be able to see anywhere else. And then we can have a day. Spend a day in Vegas. And then I was like, oh, wait, it's $350 a ticket.

[Aaron Witt]

And which then makes no sense for somebody in their twenties who just wants to see it. Who just wants to see.

[TJ]

It's like, yeah. I was like, never mind, guys.

[Aaron Witt]

It's such a bummer. It's such a bummer.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Ticket price so high it doesn't leave any room for three dollar minimum bets.

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah. What are you gonna put on the roulette table?

[Aaron Witt]

After, anyway, so we see Bama. We wanted to get machines moving out. We didn't get machines moving out. Yeah, that was a bust. The Monday morning. So that was Sunday. Monday morning we leave the hotel, we go to the Munich airport, We fly to Cologne.

[TJ]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Because I've done that drive a few times. I didn't need to do it again. Yeah, we fly to Cologne. The plan was we were going to spend the week with Zeppelin. They had arranged some customer visits based on our visit last year. I was like, all right, I want to see xyz.

[TJ]

Yep.

[Aaron Witt]

The first one was a guy personally that has a 994. An old 994. So not the next gen, which is much bigger than the old ones, but the old ones are still a 994.

[TJ]

To personally own one, it's a huge.

[Aaron Witt]

He has it at an asphalt plant.

[Jack]

Zero sense.

[Aaron Witt]

It makes zero sense. But it doesn't have to make sense because he wanted one and he bought one. Which I appreciate. Yeah, that's. I respect the hell out of that. So we were going to go see it work. The problem is it broke, so it wasn't working. That was a bust. We were also gonna go see some paving of the autobahn, but weather screwed that one up. So we didn't get to see the autobahn get paved.

[TJ]

So we're at this point, we're five days in.

[Aaron Witt]

We're over three, over four. Because we didn't really get a whole lot from Bauma either. And our goal was to make YouTube videos. So when we're saying oh, for four. We had planned for four videos. At this point, we had zero. We then tried to make Monday work. The travel schedule at that point, we should have just driven from Munich. It would have been faster. But we had the flights line up. We had the logistics lined up. At that point, we're just in it. So then we spend all day driving and traveling, which was a grind. We go try to see a recycling customer, steel recycling customer, with some material handlers, cool machines, however, that just. I kind of want to talk about what happened, but I don't want to talk about what happened because it wasn't like the machine had some problems. Yeah, they were feeding steel into this machine that shredded it.

[TJ]

Oh, yeah. Well. Well, we got there and then the guy kind of said, like, I don't know, we can't really get close up or detailed shots.

[Aaron Witt]

I'm like, you can't show the machine in process. Just show the equipment.

[TJ]

It's like, well, like, what does that.

[Jack]

Mean Jack looked at me and said that. I was like, are you fucking kidding me?

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So we're, we're.

[Jack]

And I don't think we were going to get full video out of it either way, but I was.

[TJ]

Yeah. After that it was a little operation.

[Aaron Witt]

So we tried to save it. That was over five at that point. So five days in. That was Monday. However, Tuesday was the salt mine.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Yes. Tuesday was a pick me up.

[Aaron Witt]

So Tuesday put some morale back in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put some, put some wind in our sails.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

We go to Bernberg, Germany. This small little town. First time in East Germany, which I.

[TJ]

Thought, oh, I like East Germany.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. They were, they were talking about East Germany. But I was like, I don't know. I like it. I think it's quite nice. It's nicer than central Illinois. So it's like this great little town on the river.

[TJ]

I don't think you've been to central Illinois.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah. Dude, you haven't seen middle America. So we go to this little town, we stay in this great little hotel along the river.

[Jack]

Oh, that hotel was awesome.

[TJ]

Was that the slow tell?

[Aaron Witt]

Slow tell?

[TJ]

Oh, yes. With the cobblestone castle. Slow tail cast cobblestone carpet.

[Aaron Witt]

Cobblestone carpet.

[TJ]

A whole suite. I had a kitchen in my hotel.

[Jack]

Room as my apartment. That was the best hotel we've ever been to.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Like a giant mural of like the town behind you that like lit up shout out Zeppelin.

[Jack]

They really hooked this up.

[Aaron Witt]

They hooked it up. Great breakfast. Killer breakfast.

[TJ]

Good dinner too.

[Jack]

Oh, that made a huge difference. We got breakfast every single day. It was so good.

[Aaron Witt]

So, so. And it wasn't just lunch meats.

[Jack]

Yeah. Thank God the. We stayed in an Ibis last time. The same area and they. All they had was lunch meats.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah. It's like German breakfast for people that haven't been around. It's just. You go. It's like. It's just lunch meats on with bread and cheese, like rolls. Yeah.

[Jack]

So you basically just make yourself a sandwich. In the morning. I saw a German dude making the first day making himself a sandwich. I was like, all right, I'm going.

[TJ]

To try this cold cut sandwich for breakfast.

[Aaron Witt]

So we go to the salt mine. 10 out of 10.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

10 out of 10. One of the senior executives for K plus S is. Was there to join us for the, for the tour, which. That's a first.

[TJ]

Yeah, this is. She was great.

[Aaron Witt]

She was great.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Massive company. She's got a lot of things to do. She comes for our tour. We Go get dressed in the white clothes. We go down 500 meters into the earth, which is like 1700ft, 1800ft. Pretty far down.

[TJ]

Quarter mile.

[Aaron Witt]

More than a quarter mile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're safely underground and you drive to the mining area. The mining area was unbelievable.

[Jack]

It was of the cooler things I've ever seen.

[TJ]

The only thing I could even slightly compare it to is Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. That's the only time I've ever been underground with ceilings even close to that high.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

And I still don't think they were as high as those. Yeah, yeah. It was incredible.

[Aaron Witt]

It was incredible.

[TJ]

37 meters.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, 37 meters. So about 140ft.

[TJ]

30. 140ft, yeah, yeah. So like 13 story building underground.

[Aaron Witt]

Underground. And they had hundreds of these rooms underground. Yeah, hundreds of them.

[Jack]

You go through these massive moving metal doors and they open up and it feels like a, like a dystopian movie when you traveling underground and you see massive vault doors open up.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, you're driving around in a open top. Jurassic park style G series Mercedes. Yeah. Jurassic park style. Yeah. So no, no top. And then the driver like to open the metal doors, there's like a little cord hanging from the ceiling. So you drive up to the cord, you pull the cord and it's like the doors open and to close them too.

[TJ]

I don't know if you noticed the guy behind us, he would. When we went through, he would always stop because he pulled it again. Pull the cord to close them.

[Aaron Witt]

Uh huh.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And it was. It went from like 80 degrees to like suddenly 65. You're just driving and it goes. The temperature just drops. Which was like really weird to be because I took off my jacket and going underground because it's never, whenever we've gone underground, it's hot.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, it depends where you are because that's where the ventilation was.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So that's where they were forcing the cold air from the surface down into the mine.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So you could tell where the fresh air was.

[Jack]

Yeah, you can immediately feel it.

[Aaron Witt]

The miner. Because the mine, when you go underground, it's way warmer, like way warmer than the surface. So they mine these rooms out underground. Loaders still. Because the tunnels are quite tight. So it's all LHD work. Yeah.

[TJ]

Tunnels are probably like 20. No, like 15ft ceilings.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Pretty. But these lhds can haul, can load and carry as much as a 992. But they look a lot tiny.

[Jack]

They look tiny.

[Aaron Witt]

They look tiny, but they don't look tiny. When you stand up next to them.

[TJ]

Take a992, put it in Photoshop and then take the top slider and just squish it. Squish it down.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you, I mean, because they look small, it's deceiving. But you're like, no, no, it's the same carrying capacity as a 992. You're like, oh, okay. That's a big loader. So. And they have these loaders working all throughout the mine. It was really dusty.

[TJ]

Salty.

[Aaron Witt]

Really salty. But the interesting thing about the salt was that you don't need a respirator because it dissolves within your body. And they have all these studies proving no long term effects. No long term effects on blood pressure. Nothing of the sort. So you can breathe it in and then it dissolves within your body. You're good to go. Because it's pure salt. Which I had. Yeah. I had not at all considered.

[TJ]

Yeah. I mean we literally picked a piece off of the ground and you could eat it. Tried some.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Unless you're a drone. If you're a drone, you're not. I think salt does not disown.

[Aaron Witt]

I think the drone was headed downhill before that though.

[Jack]

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it started. The problems really started right there though.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So they produce this salt, hundreds of thousands of tons a year for de icing, for roads, for food and for water tablets. Water softening. And they gave us some boxes of salt.

[Jack]

Yeah. That's why I waited in that two hour line yesterday at the airport. Just for that box of salt.

[Aaron Witt]

Now you can cook with it.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Straight K plus S German Bernberg salt.

[Jack]

No microplastics.

[Aaron Witt]

No microplastics. Yeah. That's what they said. They said sea salt has microplastics in it.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Whereas rock salt does not. So no more sea salt for me. She was rock salt only.

[Jack]

She knew a lot that. I was really impressed with their CEO. She knew a whole lot.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And she was very humble. She was very open to learning from the other guy too.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, no, no, they. Everybody was fantastic. The tour, VIP tour. 10 out of 10. I cannot say enough nice things about Cabless. They're a massive mining company that was a massive mine. Usually we don't get the best of service. Like we're kind of an afterthought. A lot of times I feel like.

[TJ]

We'Re like the very big places.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Where it's like, listen, we've got fucking production and I get it, I get it. Like I don't take it personally.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

But it's, but it's Also it's like, hey, if you guys work with us, we're gonna make you look better. Like the more you give us, the more you're gonna get in return. Like it's a. It's a two way street here. So if you're not very helpful, we can only do so much.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

But if you're very helpful, we can, we can really do something cool together. And I think this will be a fantastic video.

[TJ]

Yeah, no, it'll be great.

[Aaron Witt]

So that was a salt mine at that point. We'd got one video. We were starting to win. We were starting to get back on track. Next day comes around, we're supposed to go see a power plant demolition project. We get there, they have a 60, 15 with the biggest shear I've ever seen.

[Jack]

Yeah. That was ridiculous.

[TJ]

Way too big for that.

[Aaron Witt]

Like compared to the 390 shear we just saw the other day.

[Jack]

Yeah, way. It was like four times as big.

[Aaron Witt]

Way huge. So not a lot was going on that day. They were in between some stuff. They had imploded the cooling tower the week before we got there, of course. Because why get there the week they're employed in the cooling tower when you can do it the week after? And it's just a pile of concrete.

[Jack]

We got there on asbestos week.

[Aaron Witt]

It's. It's like they're just doing straight abatement. They can't do anything on the power plant until they get rid of the. All the asbestos siding on the entire power plant. So that's what they're doing. We asked the guy who's not. Who's kind of like having to get shit done. He's not really there to be a tour guide again. I get it. To then fire up the 6015 for us. And the battery's dead.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So.

[Jack]

Yeah, it wouldn't matter. That thing wasn't lifting up that chair.

[Aaron Witt]

I.

[Jack]

There's no, no way on God's green earth that thing was going anywhere.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And if it was the back end of the machine, it was tilting up because that thing was. The sheer was way too big.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Way too big.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we didn't. Didn't get to see it. That's fine.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

But that. That took the window sails a little bit again.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So we were heading the wrong direction at that point. Then we go. And. And we're in Hanover, Germany now. But then we go see north of Hanover. The rail excavator.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Yeah. That was. That's where the trip really turned around.

[Aaron Witt]

Which was very cool.

[Jack]

That was awesome.

[TJ]

Yeah, that was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

Yes. It makes the rail excavators in America look like kids toys.

[Jack]

Yeah. It was sick.

[TJ]

Well, the ones over here are just normal excavators with.

[Aaron Witt]

With a high rail setup.

[TJ]

With a high rail setup.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Those are like. Specifically.

[Aaron Witt]

Those are. It's probably the most custom machine I've ever seen.

[Jack]

Big fan of the buddy seat.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So it has. It's a two passenger excavator.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

The second seat is behind the operator seat, which is funny.

[Jack]

Yeah. Has its own door too.

[Aaron Witt]

Has its own door. Yeah. It's straight, straight up. Its own cabin behind. And it has all. Every bell and whistle you can imagine on this thing for rail construction work in Europe, which is very specific.

[Jack]

I was sitting in the backseat and I can just see the big red stop work button and I'm like so tempted to hit it. But it was just like I was like looking at it like if. If I bump this, this is within 2 inches of my hand this entire time. If I bump this, this thing's just gonna stop.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, I got in and I immediately pressed the horn button.

[Jack]

Yes.

[Aaron Witt]

But it didn't work. But it's not. It's not just a machine horn. It's a train horn.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, it's a horn.

[Jack]

The horn was red, which is not. I don't see that. It was like next to the stop work button and. And red.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Which is like, you know that thing's gonna pop off.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. The. So the rail was closed for maintenance. It was a private rail. So we had a lot more leeway than we would have had on a commuter public rail. Yep. At first he had a mulching head on the machine and was just cleaning up some grass. Etc. In like middle of a field. Yeah. It was quite nice actually. Quite.

[Jack]

Pictures really good on the cameras.

[Aaron Witt]

And then they're like, do you want us to put something else on? We're like, sure, yeah.

[Jack]

Hell yeah, brother.

[Aaron Witt]

So he. They get in the machine and they tear down the track. It hauls ass too.

[Jack]

It'll go like 40 kilometers an hour.

[Aaron Witt]

We'll go 40. I don't think it's 40.

[Jack]

It's like 35.

[TJ]

It'll go like 35 miles an hour.

[Jack]

You said no kilometers per hour.

[Aaron Witt]

So it's probably like 20, 25 miles per hour.

[TJ]

Okay. Nothing was moving.

[Aaron Witt]

It was move. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. So we then drive to the next area. The operator then puts on a feller butcher. Like. Yeah, like a tree felling head.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

With the Little chainsaw that comes out and like it grabs onto the trees, cuts it with a chainsaw and then has a grapple. And then can he then put a trailer onto the machine and then was grabbing trees from the right of way and putting them into the trailer.

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Which was sick.

[Jack]

Yeah, it looked really good too, with the green fields.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Germany at that time, it was very, very pretty from at least the drone perspective.

[Aaron Witt]

Beautiful.

[Jack]

Yeah, beautiful.

[Aaron Witt]

So that was the rail excavator. Then we went to the most American German steakhouse ever, whatever it was called.

[Jack]

Yeah, the food district was great.

[Aaron Witt]

It was called like Moose country or you know, something like that. You walk in, it's like, it looks like Bass Pro shop, but you're in.

[TJ]

The whole area was like a little America. It was, it was sick. That in the Corner it had McDonald's across the street.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

It had an upside down house. Like there's like the one in Pigeon Forge.

[Aaron Witt]

Sure.

[TJ]

Like the. Well, there's an upside down. It's like a museum in Pigeon Forge, but similar. And then it had like go karts late. Like laser tag. Like ski.

[Jack]

The fake ski resort.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Well, we don't have. I wish we had more of those. But like. Yeah, it was like all this little area of just like shit to do.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. And so for kids primarily, we have.

[Jack]

A couple of those here. There's one in California.

[TJ]

Oh, but, but no. Yeah, that was, that was good.

[Aaron Witt]

So from there, that was. That will be a good video. Then from there we went to Hanover. Huge fan of Hanover. I thought it was delightful. Very cool. Very similar to Copenhagen, Denmark. So highly recommend Hanover or. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hamburg, Hamburg.

[Jack]

Hamburg. Yeah. Hanover was great too though.

[Aaron Witt]

Hanover was nice. But Hamburg was great because it's on the water. And then the next morning, Thursday morning, we go to Miniature Wonderland.

[Jack]

That was sick. Yeah. And we got a personal tour.

[Aaron Witt]

Yes. Behind the scenes tour of Miniature Wonderland.

[TJ]

If you are ever in Germany.

[Aaron Witt]

If you're in Germany. If you're going to Germany.

[TJ]

Hamburg.

[Aaron Witt]

Go to Hamburg on your list. Well, you need to. Yeah, you need to put Hamburg on your list for Miniature Wonderland.

[Jack]

Yeah. And you got to go early. Go, go early in the morning.

[Aaron Witt]

But it's open till 2am that's insane. So you can go get. You can go to the clubs and then go to Miniature One.

[TJ]

That's probably a fun crowd, I'm sure.

[Jack]

Dude, just shit faced off some Heineken. Just walking through, looking at all the people. There's so much in there. You will never, ever, ever, ever Figure out, like, go through every single thing and be able to see it.

[Aaron Witt]

No, we were. We were kind of going quick during the tour to just see it all, but then we went to that last model and spent like, 30 minutes.

[TJ]

Is.

[Aaron Witt]

Rio de Janeiro. And we spent 30 minutes just looking at, like, a square meter.

[TJ]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack]

The detail is like, you'd look up in the. In the windows, and there'd be. There'd be a bride in the window to the right, and she's like, looking at a wedding dress, holding it up in an apartment. And then you look two windows down and to the left, and there's a girl in the actual dress. So it's like you could tell that they try to connect the story. Whereas, like, this girl's jealous of this girl that she's getting married. And then, like, there's robbers in another.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some like. Yeah. Some guys stealing stuff. Yeah.

[Jack]

Ski masks, trash.

[TJ]

By far out of that whole place. The most impressive thing to me was the real time emergency response.

[Aaron Witt]

Yes.

[TJ]

So they have certain. On certain models, or maybe. I'm sure every model maybe has at least one. They'll have, like, a truck that every 20 minutes will catch fire and it will shoot smoke. It will. Smoke will come out of it, and then the fire trucks will come out of the fire station, no matter how far away it is. And we'll drive all the way up with sirens and all drive up, and they'll pull up. It's ambulances. Like, the emergency response thing blew my mind. Like.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack]

All.

[TJ]

It was all incredible. But when I saw, I was like, no way. Like, they're actually coming out of the fire station, going down the road with.

[Aaron Witt]

The little lights on, the lights on.

[TJ]

The sirens, and they're pulling up. I'm like, that's cool.

[Jack]

And the other shocking things they had before we get to airport, because I know that that's probably the coolest thing there. The other shocking thing, tide rises in one of the water ones.

[Aaron Witt]

And it's real water.

[Jack]

And it's real water. And the tide. The tide. Right. And certain boats can't be on there during. During certain tide times. So they. You seem float off.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack]

Back.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So the whole, like, the whole place is. I thought it was like one model where you, like, walk into a room and it's like a model. You're like, oh, this is pretty cool.

[TJ]

It's.

[Aaron Witt]

It's all scale model.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So it's the biggest, like, scale model train setup in the world. This place. They have 450 people that work there. Yeah, Just building these fucking models. That's how much they're. And they've been building it for decades. But it's just rooms. Every room is a different model.

[TJ]

It was endless. Expand, still expanding, still expanding.

[Aaron Witt]

But it takes years for them to build just one. Like the model we saw it was. Wasn't even close to being done. They're like, yeah, we've been working on two years.

[TJ]

Chile.

[Aaron Witt]

Wasn't it something? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. South America. Somewhere.

[TJ]

South America.

[Aaron Witt]

But each one of these is set in a different place and it's these massive scale models. So there's trains going through, there's cars, there's people, buildings. Everything happening all over.

[TJ]

The people are like individual. Like, well, not just. Not just like copy and paste. They're individually, they're individual, unique people. And like there's a couple models that had concerts or like events. And you'd think like, oh, they probably just like paste in a bunch of like little heads in the crowd. No, look like the crowd is individual little minifigures. Some are eating a sandwich, some are drinking a beer, some are sleeping. Some are yelling like it's.

[Aaron Witt]

And it's like 5,000 of them. Yeah. But in like a square foot, like a crowd of scale people.

[TJ]

It was. Yeah, it was incredible.

[Aaron Witt]

So that was quite fun. That was really just for fun. Since we were there. Wanted to see it. I've always wanted to go. Yeah, they have a great.

[TJ]

Worth it, great YouTube channel.

[Jack]

Highly recommend you get to go behind the scenes and see how the cars recharge and stuff. Yeah, that was super cool.

[TJ]

And to be honest, if I dock themselves. I had to be honest, if I go back, I would not do the tour and just go.

[Aaron Witt]

The tour was fun just to see. See it.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Like, it was good context.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

But I would have loved. I. You could spend hours.

[Jack]

You just stayed in the first room the whole time we were there. And. Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

At Monaco. Like you could have spent hours just at that Monaco.

[TJ]

One track. And then they have the F1 track. And he said that the. It's not just like a set race every time. It's different cars.

[Aaron Witt]

It's insane.

[TJ]

Different cars win.

[Aaron Witt]

It's insane.

[TJ]

Actually. They're like actually like. And they're controlled. All the cars. It's magnets. Or is it. They have like a little probe. Copper probe on the front.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Car. And that's how it knows where to go.

[Aaron Witt]

I don't know.

[TJ]

I don't know how it totally works, but it's pretty. It's not like they're on, like, rails. Like, the cars are free driving. Yeah, Cars.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

And. Yes. I don't know how exactly it works.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Like, the complexity is. Is. And all the cars have working lights. There's nighttime, daytime.

[TJ]

The control room looked like something you see at NASA.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Yeah. They've 17 kilometers of railroad track. Okay. So that was miniature Wonderland. That was Hamburg. Now, when we were driving up there, we were still trying to save the visit at this point. And Simon mentioned that Hagedorn demolition company we had visited before but didn't get to see a lot of. Because of weather. Go figure. Rain in Germany. That never happens because of weather. Didn't get to see them. We know they're a big demolition company. And he was like, hey, they might be doing something big in Hanover. So looked into it, they were doing something big. They were demolishing a bridge over Easter weekend. And I thought we were screwed Easter weekend because Europe has Friday and Monday off. So I thought we were going to have four days of nothing. But because of that, Hagedorn was. Was demolishing this bridge to get rid of it, to not disrupt the town while everybody was off. So we changed course. We then went back to Hanover on Thursday afternoon. Evening. And watched them demolish the bridge.

[TJ]

Yeah. Which is very cool.

[Jack]

That was awesome.

[Aaron Witt]

It was. It was so cool.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So cool. They started in the middle. They had two 349s with processors that just started munching in either direction. And then they had all sorts of other excavators grabbing all the steel, cutting it up, processing concrete, hauling it off. And while we were there, they made a ton of progress. I mean, really opened it up, like three, four hours.

[TJ]

It was right next to a bar.

[Aaron Witt]

Yes.

[TJ]

People were just outside watching.

[Aaron Witt]

I mean, you could be. You could throw a rock from where the people were drinking beer to the 349. Just.

[TJ]

You could wobble rock. It was not even a throw.

[Aaron Witt]

No, no.

[Jack]

And you'd walk by the bar, and the bar was empty on the inside, and everybody's sitting outside with their beers just watching the construction equipment.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Like 30 people. I mean, it was like a crowd the whole time. I got a bunch of crowd photos with machines in the background. It's quite cool.

[Jack]

I filled up like an SD card and a half, just shooting there. Yeah, it's one of those rare sites we get on and you don't really have to move. And there's just so much going on.

[Aaron Witt]

It was. It was like a textbook example of European demolition. The planning was perfect. The execution was perfect. Equipment was perfect. Everything about it made perfect sense.

[Jack]

The dirt under the bridge was. That was really cool. I hadn't seen that.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Packed up the dirt. And then.

[Aaron Witt]

So they. It was an overpass, so it wasn't super high up, but they. They had built up this. They brought in dirt and built it all the way up underneath and compacted it underneath the. The overpass.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So for two reasons. One, so the overpass wouldn't drop, and they would cause vibrations to the buildings that were very close to it. But then two, the three 49s could just work at the same elevation of the bridge, just making it more efficient, which I thought was brilliant as well. I was like, that's great.

[Jack]

And you could. You could stack three on the same end of the bridge, three excavators on the same end of the bridge and not have to, like, worry about getting in anybody's way. Because there's dirt or dirt ramp on this side and a dirt ramp on this side. So you can have an excavator here, an excavator here, and an excavator here. Just munching away at the bridge.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, it's just safer, too, because you're not dropping concrete anywhere. You're not working at. Up. Working at heights. You're just. You're just munching along as you go.

[TJ]

Yeah, it was. It was good.

[Jack]

It was really efficient. One guy doing rebar, one guy just munching concrete, one guy loading it up.

[Aaron Witt]

It was amazing.

[Jack]

Turning and burning.

[Aaron Witt]

So. So that was Hagedorn. That'll be a great video. Very excited about that one.

[Jack]

McDonald's nearby.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. You guys. Yep, Yep.

[Jack]

Chicken and cheese.

[Aaron Witt]

We hit. There was a lot of McDonald's going on this trip.

[TJ]

We sampled everyone.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So German McDonald's. Quite good.

[Jack]

Probably the best.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Quite good.

[Jack]

I would say they have the best McDonald's.

[TJ]

Jerry McDonald's is on top.

[Jack]

That's why I mentioned it then. Couldn't let it go.

[Aaron Witt]

Friday, we drove from Germany to Belgium. Spent the night in Brussels. I'd never been to Belgium. Never been to Brussels. It was okay.

[Jack]

Yeah. It's all right.

[Aaron Witt]

I. I mean, it was fine. Like, I wasn't.

[TJ]

It was European city.

[Aaron Witt]

It was. It was a European.

[TJ]

Wasn't anything crazy.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Yeah. Home of the eu. So I got to see that. Then the next day, we drove to Rotterdam.

[Jack]

That place was sick.

[TJ]

Rotterdam was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

Rotterdam was very cool.

[TJ]

Yep.

[Aaron Witt]

I've always wanted to see it. So we got to see Rotterdam, which was very nice.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Then from there, we went to Amsterdam. Amsterdam was cool.

[TJ]

Yes.

[Jack]

Was cool. As an understatement. Was sick.

[Aaron Witt]

It's. Yeah, it's. It's.

[TJ]

It's quite the place.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, it's quite the place.

[Jack]

A different world.

[Aaron Witt]

It's. It's. It's kind of like a Vegas vibe. Like, I feel like the town is pretty touristy. Like, I feel like people from the Netherlands don't go into Amsterdam proper.

[TJ]

Amsterdam.

[Jack]

Yeah. Now where we were.

[Aaron Witt]

Or it's like Nashville here. Like, no one that lives here goes near downtown Broadway.

[TJ]

Yeah. But there's the prettiest city I've been in.

[Aaron Witt]

The prettiest.

[TJ]

Pretty close. I mean, maybe tied with Copenhagen. I don't know.

[Aaron Witt]

I. I really like.

[TJ]

I really like, like, the canals.

[Aaron Witt]

It's. It looks nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you didn't have all the people in trash. Yeah, it'd be. It'd be gorgeous. Yeah, but it was like.

[TJ]

Well, if you're talking from an object, objectively, yes, kind of gross. Was prettier. But, yeah, if you kind of drown, forget about the trash.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you forget about it, you can.

[Jack]

Kind of distract it away from the trash and the.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, but I was running around the mornings, so you.

[Jack]

You notice it.

[TJ]

I'm talking, like, just like the canals, the. The buildings and like just the. And we had good weather.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

And, yeah, it was. It was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, it's quite lovely.

[TJ]

I liked it a lot.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

It has a little Easter festival going on. Me and Jack checked out. It was.

[TJ]

Surprise. Easter festival. Yeah, that was cool.

[Jack]

So if you want good food in Europe, go to the Netherlands. That's what I would say. That pizza was so good over there, too.

[Aaron Witt]

Yes. Yeah, it was. It's very good. So we saw Amsterdam for a little bit, but then we were in the Netherlands because we were going to spend two days with Pawn, the Dutch caterpillar dealer. So Zeppelin hooked us up in Germany. Pawn hooked us up in the Netherlands. The first day we went out and saw Van Ord, one of the biggest marine construction companies, one of the biggest Dutch construction companies. And they're working on this dike reinforcement. So they had this river that would flood every once in a while.

[TJ]

Save the Newt was No.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, the dike was to protect all of the land because it's. Yeah, it's kind of similar to what they were doing in North Dakota on that flood control project. Like, it's just very, very flat. So when the river floods, it's a huge area that the water fans out over. So they have these enormous earthen dikes. That keep the water back during those flood events and they were reinforcing these. The interesting thing was though, that everything was battery powered. I think it's the biggest battery powered construction project in the world.

[TJ]

Yeah, it was interesting to say the least. It was very. It was cool.

[Jack]

And that's why they. That's why they were saving the newt. Because it was battery powered.

[TJ]

I just like saying new.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, I do like saying nude.

[Jack]

I don't think it was actually.

[TJ]

It's like a little salamander thing, isn't it?

[Aaron Witt]

There, There were some. Yeah, there were some little newts hanging out.

[TJ]

You saw one?

[Aaron Witt]

No, I didn't. I didn't see one Piss.

[TJ]

I wanted to see.

[Aaron Witt]

No, they were off doing their own thing, the tractors. Everything was too noisy. Oh, kinda, I guess. Kinda. Yeah. Not really noisy at all. Maybe. Maybe there's a little nude party going on because it was quiet.

[Jack]

Because everything, everything was better. Even the haulers were battery powered. They had big old.

[Aaron Witt]

The dump trucks were battery powered. The cranes are electrical, you know, not. They weren't generators. Yeah, they were battery. But they were, they, they were plug in. Yeah, they were. They had trailing cables. The excavators, the three 30s that we saw were battery power. Yeah, tractors. Battery powered. Loaders. Battery powered, yeah, everything.

[TJ]

Where was the loader?

[Aaron Witt]

There were some loaders like the one with the squeegee.

[TJ]

Oh, the squeegee one.

[Aaron Witt]

Yep.

[TJ]

That was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

So they had. I thought the coolest machine out there was the 330, the long reach with the clay chain bucket.

[TJ]

That's pretty ingenious, huh? That one was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

When I was talking to Ryan the other day, he was like. Was it like. Oh, I've seen that. I've seen the chains on the inside. Like.

[Jack]

No, no way different.

[Aaron Witt]

There was no back to it. Yeah, the whole back was chains.

[TJ]

But it makes sense because it's constantly moving so it won't stick.

[Aaron Witt]

It makes perfect sense.

[Jack]

And then gravity just takes a clay out.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, it was amazing how well it worked.

[TJ]

And it's thick enough and it sticks enough where it's not gonna fall through.

[Aaron Witt]

No, it didn't fall through at all. Yeah, it was so cool.

[Jack]

It was one of the cooler attachments I've ever seen.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So they took us through the project, they showed us the logistics of the battery stuff, which was.

[Jack]

Ridiculous. A lot ridiculous.

[Aaron Witt]

A lot.

[Jack]

I do that. That must be such a headache for whoever has to be in charge of that because. Yeah, this is so much.

[Aaron Witt]

They, they said they've had to do a Lot of learning to figure it out.

[TJ]

Yeah, I can mention a lot of learning.

[Aaron Witt]

So the project requires it and that's why they're doing it. So the government requires it in this area for reasons we can explain. I don't totally understand. No, it's nitrogen.

[Jack]

Nitrogen. Yeah. That's farts. Yeah. That's why I thought of methane, because you're talking about the farts.

[Aaron Witt]

So. But, but they've had to figure it out. Like there's no, there's no playbook on how to do this. There's like the OEMs aren't really all that helpful from a big picture standpoint. Like they've had to work with the local dealers and they've just had to figure it out. Which I do appreciate how, how they've had to like from an iterative standpoint, just figure out what works and what doesn't work.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So that was interesting.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, a video on that.

[TJ]

It was, it was interesting. Like what he said. Charge it in the morning, charge it at lunch.

[Aaron Witt]

Charge it, Charge it at lunch.

[TJ]

Charges three times a day.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Yeah. And then you have a battery charger out there in the field next to the excavator. Yeah. Plug it in. Yeah.

[TJ]

He's got a track over there.

[Aaron Witt]

Plug it in, huh? While he's eating.

[TJ]

Yep. And then they have the battery charging station, like the main station for the whole project. Probably like a kilometer away.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So the batteries on these trailers that they hook up to, they drive to a charging area, then they charge them during the day and then they switch them out. So they're constantly switching batteries between the charging area and the job site. And then the machines are constantly. They're switching their batteries out. You can lift the batteries off the machine and put new ones on or charging themselves directly, which is how the 330s did it. So that was that. I'm very happy to be in with Vanward a little bit more. I just, I want to see some of their other stuff. They do some really cool stuff. So the next day we go see Van Toonen.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Another Dutch company and they build and rent enormous marine excavators primarily. They do all kinds of stuff. Trucks, dozers, loaders, etc, they'll do anything. But the main, main product is these triple boom excavators. They're the only ones in the world like this and they are crazy cool.

[TJ]

They're good. They're good at it. Yeah, they're really good at it. Yeah. We saw them last year in Denmark.

[Aaron Witt]

Yep.

[TJ]

At the blinking fam arm Belt.

[Aaron Witt]

Yep.

[TJ]

Project which is. They had the 6015. Yeah, that was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

6015, 390s, 395s.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

All kinds. Yeah.

[TJ]

If you need a triple boom long reach, they're the guys.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Then the triple boom is advantageous because the long reach, it doesn't give you much working area especially when you're close. You can get out but you can't get close. Whereas the triple boom, it gives you a whole range of motion. So you can, you can do an entire. Like when you're. When you're building these rock works which we don't have a lot of in the States but there's. They're all over the world. You need, you need the reach to get out but then you also need to work up right under, almost underneath your tracks. And these triple booms allow you a lot more versatility.

[Jack]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

So that's why they build them mostly.

[Jack]

For rock where they widen the tracks. On the one we saw, they widen.

[Aaron Witt]

The tracks just for stability because you have so much more weight. So you need it, you just need a bigger footprint. Yeah.

[TJ]

And then they have. The one we saw was a 1900.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So the one they were building at the yard that was completed was a 1900. They've been working on it for months. They bought it, they broke it down, they rebuilt it.

[Jack]

Looked way bigger than 1900.

[Aaron Witt]

It looked way. Well because it was way bigger than 1900.

[Jack]

Looking huge.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah. So they fired it up, they explained how they've built it all and then the week after they were breaking it down to send it to France to a big project down there.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

It's the second one they have.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Or maybe third. I think they know the third one they have. They have two 1900s and one 2000 triple boom. Let's go.

[Jack]

I should start the round. Oem.

[TJ]

One of the.

[Jack]

Just make crazy.

[TJ]

One of the interesting parts from that visit was the size of their yard was like almost comically small.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

You know like cuz like we visited Van Tunen last year in December, not Denmark and you know they had tons of machines out there. They're all you know, 60, 15, 390, these big excavators. And then you're telling us like oh we're going to go to there shop or like where they build them. I'm like oh yeah. This is surely going to be like a decent sized place. They build massive excavators. It should be decently sized. Yeah, it was. It wasn't all that like they had it like we walked, we walked into the off front office and then you walk out of the back door, the front office. And then it was just. The Hitachi was just sitting there and.

[Aaron Witt]

He was like, they had a 60, 15 in the parking lot.

[TJ]

Yeah. And it was, the Hitachi was just neatly placed like perfectly where it could fit. Like, I don't think it couldn't really.

[Aaron Witt]

Fit any other, but it was, it was diagonal. Yeah.

[Jack]

Because it could, it couldn't fit. They had four 45 ton articulating truck beds just sitting on a shelf like.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah, like, like three shelves up.

[Jack]

Yeah, three shelves up. And then like 20 million worth of buckets just all sitting, just tightly stacked.

[TJ]

And then tightly stacked in the, in the back. They had probably six or seven OEM booms.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Inches of each other. Because when they're, he said when they're done, when they want to sell it, they just put the OEM back on it.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

And then sell it.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. And then they had, they had another, another 6015 they're working on and then another 6015 that was brand new with the plastic on the seat just sitting there. They're like, yeah, we just haven't got to it yet because we've been so busy building this other stuff. It's like what a crazy place this is.

[TJ]

And it's just like, I can't think of like what to compare it to size wise. Like not even as big as like a Walmart parking lot.

[Aaron Witt]

But, but that, but that, that's what's so impressive about this is they build these massive machines, these triple booms, only ones in the world. No room with, with this pretty, pretty small footprint. Like the amount of work they do within this footprint is incredible. Incredible.

[TJ]

Yeah, it's like probably like a half a Walmart parking lot.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah.

[TJ]

Like.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

If you're talking square, total square foot, like it was. Yeah. And like, like you said, like they had this one side was just these massive shelves with buckets stacked inches within each other.

[Aaron Witt]

But every bucket imaginable.

[TJ]

All the. Yeah, he goes. All the.

[Jack]

I didn't know grapples. I didn't realize how many we had until we, I looked, we got them all in the yard and that was a lot of buckets.

[Aaron Witt]

But they, but they rent equipment so ideally they don't really need much space because ideally the machines are working, which they are like. Yeah, the machines are out working, doing, doing the job. So they're only. And when they bring machines back, they rebuild them and then they send them back out. Like all these Machines built for jobs. Yeah.

[TJ]

And if they are, and if they, if they do sit there, like they don't have the, they don't have the booms on them.

[Aaron Witt]

No, no, no.

[TJ]

Other than they taught you. But they taught you was about to leave or they just finished. They were making sure it was good to go.

[Aaron Witt]

Yep.

[TJ]

And then they were going to break it down.

[Aaron Witt]

So that was Van Tunen, which was great. Then from there went to the airport, flew to Rome for the final stop of the visit.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Next day we drive out to Despae.

[TJ]

You can't forget to mention that we decided to go to Rome the day after the Pope died.

[Aaron Witt]

So the Pope died Monday and we flew to Rome on Wednesday.

[TJ]

Okay.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. So the day after the Pope died, it was an interesting time to be in bay flying to Rome, that's for sure.

[Jack]

The airport was packed.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. The whole place, the Rome was packed. I've never seen more police, more military police, more soldiers within a urban environment than I saw in Rome. And how many cop cars.

[TJ]

I knew the Pope was a big deal, but like I didn't think it was like that.

[Aaron Witt]

Oh yeah, everybody was there.

[TJ]

It was crazy.

[Aaron Witt]

But the next day we go see Despair because they have the Jumbo built by Laurini. So I talked with Jumbo, my friend Marco Orini, he connected me with Despay. Despo said, come on out. And we saw their 6015, which is. It starts as 150 ton machine, but this is a 300 plus ton machine. Probably the biggest 6015 in the world.

[TJ]

In the world.

[Aaron Witt]

I think it's the biggest demolition machine in Europe.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

It's a monster by weight.

[TJ]

The, the stance on this thing was probably at least double what a normal 615 was like.

[Aaron Witt]

It was.

[Jack]

That was so funny. We got on the site and within two seconds the guy's like, you want to run it?

[TJ]

Yeah, but no one through Google Translate.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, but they couldn't speak English. We can't speak Italian. So we're speaking. We do the entire trip, the entire visit through Google Translate. Yeah. Which worked out great. It worked out really good.

[Jack]

Yeah. He, he was just. You hand him your phone, you. And then spit out. You want espresso?

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah. So we see they're, they're. They're finished up at this point with the building demolition. They're working on the foundations, which were some of the biggest foundations I've ever seen, if not the biggest bunker type foundation.

[Jack]

Is it like a Toyota? Toyota?

[Aaron Witt]

No, they said Alitalia.

[Jack]

Is that a car manufacturer?

[Aaron Witt]

I think it's the airline. I don't know.

[Jack]

But it was a big ass building.

[Aaron Witt]

It was in the front. Yeah.

[Jack]

Which was weird.

[Aaron Witt]

Huge campus. They were. They were tearing up the foundations and they had. I mean the bucket was still like a 10 meter bucket. It was a. Yeah. Airline. So huge bucket, huge machine. We watched them tear some stuff out. It was great. Then they're like, coffee break, like over in Italy. Of course. Coffee break. Yeah. Why not have a espresso break? So we go have our espresso break in the job trailer. We come back out, they're like, hey, we're going to work more. And then you want carbonara at noon. We're like, fuck, yeah, we want carbonara at noon. Like we're.

[TJ]

He said, he said like a string of sentences in Italian and then carbonara. Carbonara. Carbonara was the only thing that I understood.

[Jack]

I was like, yeah, sign me up. That's Jack's favorite. Send me a.

[Aaron Witt]

So we capture the machine more at that point. He had a 336 working next to the 6015. Which was very helpful for this, for scale size comparison.

[TJ]

Yeah. There was, there was also a 390 behind it. Working. Sorting a pile.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

And that, that 6015 made that 390 look like a 320.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[Jack]

I got up on the drone. I. You would never. You never thought that that was a 390 because of how small it looked next to that machine. And a 6015, like a normal 6015 next to 390. It doesn't dwarf it that hard. Like it definitely dwarfs it, but it's not like, it's not like anything that, that 6015, you definitely tell it was way, way bigger.

[Aaron Witt]

Well, but like, like the project we were just on with Vite390, that's a big. That's the biggest machine on site. That's a monster. That's the star of the show. Usually it's. It's the machine on site. Whereas this one's like, yeah, 390. And then you walk by it. Just walk some rebar right by it and go right to the jumbo.

[TJ]

So definitely jumbo.

[Aaron Witt]

Very impressive company.

[TJ]

It's got the quick switch booms.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. It can. It has a much bigger boom on it. They showed us how all that works. Everything like that. They were extremely helpful. Very friendly. Very. I love those visits when they're super happy to have us.

[TJ]

Yeah. Even we didn't even speak the same language.

[Aaron Witt]

No. And then after that we had lunch which was.

[Jack]

We Pulled up, he goes, three carbonaras. Didn't give us an option.

[Aaron Witt]

No, we didn't order.

[Jack]

You're getting three carbonaras.

[TJ]

No, it was. Yeah. And then they had like, the, the meats, when you sit down, it was like the dry salami.

[Aaron Witt]

Salami and the breads and olive oil and.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Yes, Good eats.

[Jack]

And then the, the next day, Jack and I wouldn't get our. Sold some Roman pizza. We tried to see the Pope.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, you guys got pizza. Try to see the Pope. That same day, I saw the Pope, I went to the Vatican. To the viewing. Yeah, I ran to the Vatican.

[Jack]

You got lucky.

[Aaron Witt]

I, I got so lucky. I didn't. I, I. That's why I didn't know that that was the line for the Pope, because I figured the line for the Pope would be, like, the whole day, because that's what they were saying on the news. I was like, I'm not even going to try because it's too long. I'm just going to get in this line. I don't know where it's going, but it's moving pretty quick. You get in line 1, 2, 6, 20 minutes later, you're at the feet of the Pope.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Open casket. Crazy.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

In the basilica.

[Jack]

And our experience was slightly different.

[TJ]

Well, we went on the last day he was open to view.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, you guys got.

[TJ]

They released an Amber Alert on the phone telling everybody that it was the last day to see him hurting sheep. So we got there. We. After the fact, we found out that the first line we stood for, for 45 minutes, we could have skipped if we walked two blocks over. And then. So we sat in that, and then we finally got in the actual line. And then we're in this actual line for another 45 minutes, at least. And then it eventually leads to 40. It was like, maybe probably an hour. It eventually leads to metal detectors. And we were like, oh, okay. This is why I was taking so long. Everybody's got to go through a metal detector. Hopefully it'll, you know, speed up a little bit after this. And we get out into the square. You know, we did get to see the St. Peter's Square.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, you got to the Vatican.

[TJ]

Pretty incredible in Vatican City. But, yeah, when we get out and then there's another line, and it's like. And it wasn't just one line. It was two. Two lines converging into each other because the line coming in from the, the other side of the square was converging. And then that's when, like, it was like three Steps forward every five minutes. And it wasn't like, oh, man.

[Aaron Witt]

It wasn't crazy organized because this doesn't happen every day, so they don't have, like, a system. It wasn't.

[TJ]

But it wasn't happened before.

[Aaron Witt]

No, it wasn't just. It wasn't disorganized for, like, for that many people. Yeah, yeah. But maybe.

[Jack]

But when we went. It was bad, but, like.

[Aaron Witt]

But for that many. Like, for hundreds of thousands of people unexpectedly converging on this one point.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Like, it wasn't like, chaos.

[Jack]

It wasn't insane.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't. It wasn't chaotic.

[Jack]

They know how to hurt people.

[TJ]

The lack of. The lack of signage was hard.

[Aaron Witt]

There was. There was no sign. It wasn't like, pope this way.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Like. Or even when you get into the Vatican.

[Jack]

Vatican, it says St. Peter. St. Peter's Square to the left, St. Peter's Basilica to the right. So we're. We get in the Vatican, we go to the square, and we're like, fuck, dude. The lines over there to the right. Well, but even to the left, I go.

[Aaron Witt]

I went through the security checkpoint, and it's like, you don't even know you're in the Vatican. You just got. You're kind of like, oh, I'm in. There's no. There's no sign that says, welcome to the Vatican.

[TJ]

Yeah, like.

[Aaron Witt]

Like, you know, you drive into Illinois and it's like, welcome. Welcome to Illinois. You know, there's.

[TJ]

There's no sign that says poor Illinois can on this.

[Aaron Witt]

You're down here now. Yeah. Well, it deserves it.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

Afterwards.

[Jack]

100.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. But incredible trip. Then we flew out next day, saw Air Force One.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Yeah. That was cool.

[Aaron Witt]

Let's go. And that was the closest I've ever been to Air Force One.

[TJ]

Well, that was cool.

[Jack]

You got this good timing right there on that.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. And now we're here, back in America.

[Jack]

And then Trump saw the Pope the next day.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah, that was.

[TJ]

Of course you did. You guys see that picture, though? What?

[Aaron Witt]

They're sitting in the basilica.

[TJ]

Oh.

[Aaron Witt]

Just like, two chairs. Two shitty chairs facing each other. It's, like, so funny. What. Where I just was. I was like. I was there 24 hours before this picture.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Story you tell the grandkids.

[Aaron Witt]

That was.

[TJ]

Listen, kids, that was Europe. It was great. The Italian pollen destroyed me. I don't know what's that. What they got going over there. But to not have allergies, dude, like, so we use the little lime bikes to get around town. Just because, like, they don't they didn't really have Uber and like their taxis were like, weird.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

We tried to get one and it was like, no, you can't do this.

[Jack]

Well.

[Aaron Witt]

And like the city was just hectic. Yeah. There was a lot bikes.

[TJ]

Bikes was. It was actually quite enjoyable getting around on bikes. And that's the other one. One of the things I do like about European cities is they're so used to bikes. Yeah. That it's. You can actually ride a bike around a European city and not. Not feel like you're going to get absolutely demolished in any second.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah.

[TJ]

Like even, like when you're. Even like when you're riding in like kind of busy intersections and it's just like people are just so used to bikes. As long as you don't do anything dumb like cut across traffic.

[Jack]

There's bike lanes too.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Which we don't have.

[TJ]

You're fin.

[Jack]

Fine.

[TJ]

Whereas like here, here in the States, like you try to ride a bike in a busy car area, you're like risking God, I'm about to get destroyed.

[Aaron Witt]

And people just hate cyclists here.

[TJ]

Yeah.

[Aaron Witt]

They hate you.

[Jack]

I don't think it's much better in Europe, but they're just used to it.

[Aaron Witt]

Most everybody's a cyclist.

[Jack]

Yeah. Yeah.

[TJ]

But no. Yeah. So we were doing the bikes and every time, didn't matter how long the ride was, like we get off and like my eyes would just be like my throat was just goggles. Yeah. Swim goggles while riding. But. But no.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[TJ]

It was springtime. For anybody who ever wants to go to Europe, go in the spring or the fall. Unless you want to go in the summer. But prepare yourself for potentially hot nights.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Just get a place with air conditioning.

[TJ]

Yeah. Or just stay far few between staying big hotels because they always have air conditioning.

[Aaron Witt]

Yeah. Well, most of them do.

[TJ]

Most of them don't. Sometimes they say they do and they don't actually do. But if you like to sleep like me in 65 degree rooms at night, either go in the spring or fall or make sure you get air conditioning because our trip last year was in July. July. And it was. It was fine for the most part. Like, usually it cools down to like the 60s at night. But there were a couple spots where I was like on top of my bed, like trying to get some airflow. I'm just like, oh, God.

[Jack]

And doesn't bother me.

[TJ]

The lizard over here doesn't matter because he sleeps in 83 degree temperature voluntarily. So bad.

[Jack]

Yeah. You guys set up your igloo and then have to.

[TJ]

Man, you set up your heatingway.

[Aaron Witt]

All right.

[Jack]

Me, I'm just the whole time.

[Aaron Witt]

So that was Europe 2025. Tune in to our YouTube channel. Search my name, Aaron Witt, on YouTube to see the videos coming soon. We've got quite a few. We didn't get as many as we planned, but they'll be good videos. We're excited about them, especially salt mine. Yeah, you guys are really going to.

[Jack]

Like the salt mine.

[Aaron Witt]

So tune in. Thank you to everybody that helped make it happen. Thank you for listening and we will see everybody on the next one.