A tale of three countries
We’re in quarantine.
A year ago ‘Travel in a time of Coronavirus’ talked of our journey from Oslo – Copenhagen – Rome. One year on, we took this trip.
Ireland
Our first stop was Dublin. We hadn’t been in a big city since Oslo. At first we were a little like rabbits in the headlights. We weaved around people and learned to have strangers around us again. That felt weird after so many months in rural places.
Our E.U vaccine passports allowed us in at the Irish border, with no tests or quarantines. The same passports were asked for every time that we went into a restaurant, cinema or bar. Unvaccinated customers were seated outdoors.
During our time in this great city, we were able to enjoy so much; Going to the cinema again, at the Irish Film Institute, walking along the river Liffey, up to Pheonix Park, afternoons on the coast, in Howth. And time with family.
Dublin’s airport was like a ghost town, on arrival and departure.
New case numbers in Ireland in one day +1,818 *
England
Part 2 of family visits took us to England. The flight was quite busy. We were reminded to board ‘socially distanced’, allowing 2 meters between us and the next passenger. I was seated next to a stranger for the first time since the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis.
Nothing could have prepared us for the arrival in Brimingham’s airport. It was pouring with rain. People pushed and shoved to get off the plane. And just one airport shuttle bus was waiting to take all of us to the terminal building. There were signs on the side of the bus that read ‘maximum 60 people on board’, but there must have been about 150 people crammed into the airport bus like sardines. In the terminal building, almost no one wore a mask. We’ve not seen any people indoors without masks since last October. It seemed that there were virtually no restrictions.
Outside the airport building, we waited for another shuttle bus, as the monorail is not functioning. We got chatting to a fellow passenger, who had travelled on the same flight from Dublin. It was a similar situation. He was visiting elderly parents in England, after almost two years apart. He told us how careful he had been doing Ireland’s lockdown and said that he wouldn’t have done the journey to Birmingham if he had known what it would be like. We reached our destination and took Rapid Antigen tests after two days, which thankfully gave negative results.
Our trip continued. That weekend we were in a beer garden by a big screen, to watch the Springboks win the final test of the British Lions series in Cape Town. We were seated far from others but observed groups of friends with no masks, no distance, no hand gel.
Taking a taxi was the same. Drivers were not wearing a mask, unless requested. Most people in shops were not wearing masks either, including the staff. It seems that most people around us were not giving the Coronavirus too much thought at all.
New case numbers in U.K in one day +36,572 *
Italy
Travelling back to Italy was more tricky, as the U.K is now on Italy’s list of concern.
We had to fill out a digital Passenger Locator Form (dPLF) for the Italian authorities. That bit was easy. Then we took our PCR tests 48 hours before departure. That bit was horrible. We waited for the results.
The airline sent an e mail saying that they were verifying the COVID-19 travel documents (vaccine certificates) but they would not let you check in for the flight until the PCR test results were back. The results arrived late the next evening, just a few hours before our flight. The test results were checked again at the airport.
We landed at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport, “Leonardo da Vinci’. Passengers were invited to leave in stages and reminded to keep their masks on in the terminal building. We showed all the relevant documents at border control. The airport was much quieter than usual, as you cannot enter the terminal building unless you actually have a flight.
Similar to Ireland, from August 6th, in Italy you must show your E.U vaccine passports to be allowed to enter a bar or restaurant. There are also checks on public transport, to control the spread of the virus. Boarding the Gaspari airport coach, we had our temperatures checked and handed our completed ”Autocertificazione anti-contagio’ forms to the driver. We put on masks to board the coach on the last leg of our journey.
We had to submit an online form for the regional authorities too, ‘Censimento arrive in Abruzzo’, in order to activate health surveillance procedures. Now we are in quarantine for five days and expect to be invited for a second test at the end of the 5-day self-isolation.
New case numbers in Italy in one day +7,260 *
These were our observations.
Are people travelling? Yes. Is it entirely safe to do so? Who knows? Some will simply say “we have to learn to live with the virus”.
We don’t have the answers. We only know that we wanted to travel to see our families and we took every possible precaution to do that safely.
But we’re happy to be home.
Where have you travelled to in recent weeks? And what was your experience there?
© Maggie M / Mother City Time
* figures at the time of writing from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/