TRAVEL

Freedom of movement

Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society.
Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer

– Author: William O. Douglas

For my birthday trip we travelled to Switzerland. We stayed with friends and met up with others.

We ate Fondue in Gruyere, visited châteaux and the Chaplin museum, enjoyed sundowners by Lake Geneva and walked by the wine estates of La Vaux. We took a boat over to Yvoirre and spent an afternoon oggling cheese at a Sunday market in Divonne, both towns in France. Throughout the week we sampled a variety of Swiss vintages, many excellent Chasselas wines and Pinot Noirs from Vaud. It was a really great trip.

But this piece isn’t about Switzerland . It’s about being able to travel freely to Switzerland at this time; no restrictions, no tests, no quarantines.

What do you think of when you hear the word freedom?

When planning our first summer trip to Ireland, we checked the Irish government’s guidelines and were reminded of the EU’s commitment to ‘Freedom of movement’.

I saw a post on social media recently, that read “there is always, always, always something to be grateful for”. This year, for us, that has been receiving both COVID vaccines, and receiving our digital passports.

Showing the ‘green pass’ has become our new normal. It has meant that we could travel freely in many countries. The EU Digital COVID Certificate affords travellers free movement inside the EU. It also applies to Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein (who make up the EEA, alongside the 27 EU member states) and Switzerland.

We used our green passes to travel freely to Ireland, and later in the summer to Switzerland and into France. We’ve been asked to show the vaccine passports in Ireland, Italy, Switzerland and France to be able to go into any restaurant, cinema or bar. The passports are required, along with ID cards, to board trains in Italy and in Switzerland. And these passports are still a requirement indoors, along with face masks.

But the passports have come to represent so much more to us than simply ‘following COVID safety measures’. For us they have been the beginning of going back to how things were before this pandemic. They are like passports to accessing normal life again.

Everyone’s experience of living with Coronavirus safety measures is different. We went through one lockdown for 8 weeks on an island in Norway. Then last autumn in Italy, the colour coded system was introduced, all informed by new cases numbers and levels of contagion. As a region, we spent a significant amount of time in an ‘orange zone’ which meant that we were confined to a near normal lifestyle, but limited to a 30 km radius.

One year on, there are no more curfews or constraints. And after receiving the vaccines, the digital passports symbolise a kind of freedom, after living with limitations.

Travel remains tricky to reach some places in the world; PCR tests, Passenger Locator forms and downloading various countries’ apps are still requirements to take a trip.

We’re reminded of a teaching activity, which encourages students to think about basic human rights. It’s an elimination game, which asks learners to debate which things in life are essential and which things are a luxury.

Of course travel for leisure is a luxury.

People talk of rights. For us, the right to travel freely, to wander, is something that was just a part of life before. Together we’ve lived in nine countries and travelled to countless others. Many people we know have chosen a similar life, and in more normal times, they all travel frequently.

© Maggie M / Mother City Time