POST-COVID TRAVEL - WITH COVID

When you live on the other side of the world and far away from your nearest and dearest (and by 'near' I don't mean in the geographical sense, obviously), you want to make your trips back to your home country count and therefore plan them meticulously, in order to make sure they go smoothly and you can enjoy them as fully as possible.

So when a few months back my other half hinted that she hadn't been abroad in almost five years (whilst I had been able to sneak in a couple of solo trips back to Europe since the end of the pandemic), I thought it was a fair point, and the pressure was on to make sure it would be a memorable experience, especially as skyrocketing airfares and a dramatically depreciated yen mean that an overseas trip is so much more expensive for us these days than in pre-COVID times.

That said, organising trips is something I believe I excel in, and which I enjoy, so much so in fact that I often feel I should be doing this for a living. I guess my reincarnation will have his career path already laid out for him...

My biggest challenge thus far had undoubtedly been to put together a 3-week wedding & honeymoon trip to Hawai'i for us and our families in the early 90s, although I sometimes do wonder how I had been able to pull that off in the pre-Internet era, when you weren't able to just google for information or even book flights and hotels online. I do remember the perplexed faces when I turned up at my local travel agency and announced that all I wanted them to do for us was to book our flights. I can't blame them for their reaction, because organising trips is, after all, what they are there for.

So when my wife, a practising Reiki healer fascinated equally with metaphysics, the spiritual world and British history, gave me a list of specific places she wanted to see in the UK (such as Glastonbury Tor, Glastonbury Abbey, Chalice Well, Stonehenge and Cadbury Hillfort, all significant ancient sites linked to Britain's Pagan history and the legend of King Arthur), I had my job cut out for me to put together an itinerary that would please both of us, with a couple of castles and historic houses thrown in for good measure, to make sure that my own interests (which tend to lie more in factual history and less in the spiritual world - although I admit that the lines can sometimes be a bit blurred) would also be catered for. Balance is everything, in marriage as well as in life in general. But especially in marriage...

The time in the UK was going to make up the core of our trip, with a few more days to be spent with family in Switzerland.

By the end of July, everything had been planned and booked, and I had received my wife's seal of approval, patting myself on the back for a job well done.

Then the unexpected happened: My mum back in Switzerland passed away in August. Given her age (92), it was bound to happen at some point and probably rather sooner than later, but it still took us by surprise.

And it seemed to jeopardise our planned trip, as we expected to have to fly over there for the funeral right away, possibly forcing the cancellation of our October holiday. Fortunately for us, my dad and brother were eager to accommodate our existing travel plans and arranged the funeral for the October period instead, thus sparing us costly cancellation charges or duplicated cost due to two separate trips. I cannot stress enough my appreciation for that!

So, although what had been meant to be a joyous occasion had now turned into a sad farewell for my mother, combining the two meant that we were still able to look forward to an exciting time in the UK, once the funeral would be over.

Fast forward to the morning of the funeral, 3 days after our arrival in Switzerland:

After a sleepless night that I put down to a combination of jet lag and a stuffy nose induced by pollen allergies, I felt as if I had been run over by a truck, with body chills, a fever, sore throat and general malaise.

Driving the 60 minutes from Basel, where we were staying, to my parents' hometown and attending my mum's funeral was the last thing I wanted to do. Crawling back into bed and staying there for the rest of the day (or indeed the week!) seemed the far more attractive option, and the more sensible one as well. But not a realistic one, given the sombre duty that lay ahead of us.

So we got ready for the sad occasion and drove to my parents' town, where my relatives would await us, together with my brother, who, as an established organist, had put together a fabulous musical programme with a talented singer, to give our mum a fitting farewell.

After having a soup for lunch in a local coffee shop, which failed to warm me up, we had about 20 minutes left till the start of the burial at the cemetery, which was to be followed by a church service and a reception. Just enough to pop into a nearby pharmacy and get some much-needed Paracetamol, along with a box of antigen test kits, just on the outside chance that my symptoms may have been caused by COVID-19. Not that I really considered that to be a possibility. After all, both my wife and I had been able to successfully prevent an infection throughout the pandemic, probably owing to our meticulous wearing of face masks and sanitising of our hands, as well as avoiding large gatherings. And perhaps a certain portion of luck, too.

But as I proceeded to take the test in the car outside the pharmacy and saw both red bars materialising on the test kit, it quickly became evident that my luck had finally run out...

Of all the moments I could have picked during the past 3 1/2 years to test positive for COVID-19, I had obviously chosen the least favourable: While on a holiday we had been planning and looking forward to for so long and on the day of my mum's funeral!

With the majority of people in attendance at the funeral (mainly consisting of all my uncles and aunts) being in their 80s and 90s, it didn't seem a wise choice for me to come anywhere near them, so we drove to the cemetery to just give them the unexpected and unpleasant news - from a safe distance.

Then we watched - also from a distance - the ceremony of lowering the urn into the ground, before the congregation filed into the church. The whole situation felt rather bizarre, to say the least.

Fortunately it was a sunny and unseasonably hot day, which made it bearable for me to sit on a bench for the duration of the ceremony, my body being warmed up by the sun.

Although a relative then texted me to say that it would be perfectly safe for us to attend the church service, as we would be able to maintain social distance, I felt too unwell to sit in a cold church, and so we decided to give the service as well as the reception a miss and instead drive back to Basel, where I could get into bed as quickly as possible.

Now, the very next day we were scheduled to be on a plane to London, and we had to make a decision (and rather quickly at that!) whether to continue on our journey, or whether we should cancel everything and just stay put. Some decisions in life are not easy, and this certainly ranked quite high among them...

Unable to reach a conclusion, we decided to defer the decision till the next morning.

After another feverish night filled with wild dreams, but helped by popping a Paracetamol every 4 hours or so, I decided that we should stick to the original plan, as I would likely start to feel better after a couple of days, and then we should still be able to enjoy the rest of the trip - providing that I hadn't passed the virus onto my wife. The likelihood of which actually seemed rather high, given her proximity to me in the preceding couple of days. But hey, life is a gamble, and sometimes you just have to go with your gut feeling and hope for the best!

Besides, neither did I feel up to the task of making phone calls and sending e-mails to cancel or change reservations, nor could I bring myself to telling my dear wife, who hadn't travelled abroad in five years, that the trip to the UK was off.

Fortunately, nowadays there are no longer any restrictions for air travel for those with COVID, although I do apologise for those sitting near us on flight BA 753 from Basel to London Heathrow on 11th October. Though in my defence, I was wearing a mask, so you were probably safe...

Mind you, I did question the soundness of this decision on several occasions over the next three days:

For example, when we were sitting at the gate at Basel Airport, waiting for the boarding call, and I felt like I was on the verge of fainting.

When driving from Heathrow Airport towards Bath, wishing I could be under a warm duvet in a cosy bed, instead of dodging heavy traffic on the M4.

When we went through with our dinner reservation on the first night, after my fever seemed to have subsided somewhat thanks to the pills I was popping, but we had to walk to the restaurant in pouring cold rain, and my brain refused to cooperate, prompting me to lead my poor wife in the opposite direction, prolonging a 15-minute walk into twice that. And then I experienced the worst sore throat in my entire life, making me question how I was going to get any food down my throat. As it turned out, my choice of ordering spaghetti seemed to be a wise one...

When we were walking up the hill (in freezing fog) to Glastonbury Tor, with me huffing and puffing like an 80-year old and having to stop every few metres to catch my breath.

When my wife was so enchanted by the spiritual surroundings at Chalice Well that she wanted to spend more time there, while all my thoughts were circling around a warm bed and a hot pot of tea. And then she used one of those practical and widely used expressions in Japanese, which lack a direct equivalent in other languages: 'Mo chotto ganbatte hoshii', which loosely translates into 'I would like you to try a bit harder'. I was already trying the hardest I could possibly muster and felt I needed to convey that in no unclear terms (with the temptation to throw in a few swear words...), but thought better of it. Because a row in the middle of the tranquil gardens of Chalice Well didn't quite seem appropriate...

Or when I developed a hacking cough the next day, replacing the sore throat, but being just as bad, so I desperately wanted to buy cough medicine. When checking online for the nearest pharmacy, we learnt that the only BOOTS store in Glastonbury was one of hundreds in Britain to be closed down, and that particular day was in fact the last day it was open. How lucky, we thought. Only to realise when we got there, that while it was their last trading day, they essentially had nothing to trade - least of all cough drops and medicine! We would have been in luck if we had been in need of cosmetics, but I imagine those would have done rather little to alleviate my cough...

We cancelled our dinner reservations on the second evening and instead opted for an early night in, especially as my wife was now also complaining about a 'slight headache and sore throat'. Probably allergies, she said. Probably COVID, I thought.

And as I finally started to feel better on the fourth day and announced that I was looking forward to a nice dinner that evening, the probably inevitable occurred: My wife had now tested positive as well and said that she wasn't well enough to go out for dinner. So hot soup and tea in the room of our B&B it was...

Thankfully, her version of COVID turned out to be lighter than mine, resembling a slight cold, rather than a heavy flu, which meant that while my health gradually improved, her condition never got as bad, which was a blessing.

Though when several warning lights on the dashboard of our rental car (including the oil light) decided to flash up at the end of the next day (a Saturday), shortly before arriving at our B&B in the Exmoor countryside, seemingly making it unsafe to continue driving, I concluded that the heavens must have truly conspired against us on this trip.

Road side assistance promised to send someone 'within the hour' and to keep us updated. But they didn't. Neither did anyone turn up, nor did we hear back from them. And after we had finished dinner, I couldn't be bothered anymore to call them, as I was too exhausted.

A renewed call on Sunday morning finally brought results, after I had conveyed the urgency of the situation and our reluctance to be stuck there.

It turned out that the lights had malfunctioned and that nothing was actually wrong with the car, so nothing stood between us and the continuation of our journey anymore.

And that was also when things were suddenly back on track, allowing us to enjoy the remaining 3 days of the trip.

The moral of this story: It's usually the craziest and toughest experiences that make for the most memorable trips. It was certainly a holiday we will not forget anytime soon!