hell and almost back: travel in a time of COVID

11th February, 2021

I awoke at 3:44am with a heavy, wrenching feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was as dark as when I had eventually drifted off to sleep, around midnight. I turned off my alarm set for 3:45.

I had my boarding passes on my phone, but as a precaution I quickly printed them out before I left, because Mercury is in retrograde. Apparently, when from the Earth Mercury appears to move backwards on its orbit — an optical illusion occurring for three weeks three times a year — travel, communication and technology can glitch. I’d told my family around dinner a few nights before that I was worried my planes would crash because Mercury is in retrograde. They laughed at me, and I was partly laughing at me too. Still though, if I’m going to live by the moon, I can’t just subscribe to the bits of the system I like.

My mama, standing by the front door, puffy eyed, worried and loving in her dressing gown: we said goodbye and I passed out into the freezing air, the brilliant stars overhead, sharp and clear. Dad, marvelling at the sky, said something about getting up more often at this time. I mumbled something in reply, too tired to really make conversation.

In the car I ate a clementine and we listened to an episode of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast. The hot seat was on and I had a blanket over me, but I was far too excited to sleep. When we arrived at Stansted Airport, Dad handed me a small cotton drawstring pouch. ‘A going away present. Also because you’ll be away for your birthday.’ A bracelet threaded with amethyst beads and a glimmering, translucent opal set in the middle. ‘I think I read the amethyst is meant to be good for travelling or protection or something like that’. ‘Thank you Dad’. Thank you for getting behind my recent crystal craze. I’ve clearly chatted about it enough, despite thinking it was my own secret world.

I practically bounced through Stansted Airport security, bought an oat chai latte and sat down to fill in my Passenger Locator Form for my flight to Greece. I’d tried to fill it in a week ago, but it had been too early. Strange, the option for 11/02 was greyed out — I had to pick 12/02 as the nearest date.

Boarding pass check; passport check; negative COVID test check — I boarded the flight to Bucharest with relative ease. Relative because it was ease for Ryanair: still we were all rammed into a connecting tunnel for 30 minutes with worse social distancing than the tube at rush hour. About a third of the people around me either weren’t wearing a mask or had their nose sticking out. The nose-peekers were mostly men. I was reminded of something I’d seen or heard about nose-peeking being the new man-spreading. Figures. I almost felt sorry for those men, reduced from penises to noses.

I felt pretty smug as the plane lifted off from UK ground; smug to be saying goodbye to the country of which I was beginning to feel embarrassed to be a national, and for less lofty political reasons to be escaping lockdown. My seat was next to a young girl watching some American TV show with Romanian subtitles on her Samsung. I tried to smile at her as I sat down but you couldn’t tell because of my mask. I slept for most of the flight, that head-lulling neck-snapping sleep. Still I woke refreshed when we touched down in Bucharest.

I bought myself a cappuccino, settled on one of the few leather-upholstered seats by a window overlooking the runway, and continued reading the novel I had started on the plane, thinking how no one really wants to read such desolate, apocalyptic, ashen fiction as The Road during a pandemic, but then Cormac McCarthy probably wasn’t thinking that at the time. At the time apocalypse was still fantasy to offset the mundane nicety of normal life.

A five hour stopover is really nothing at all when you factor in the time to go through security, set up base, buy some snacks, take a few toilet trips and then arrive at the gate for the next flight an hour before take off. I drained the rest of my Coke and funnelled into the queue as the flight to Athens started boarding. I glanced up at the guy adjacent to me in the queue and I motioned to him to go before me. I was in a generous mood.

‘Passport?’

‘Passport.’

‘PLF?’

‘PLF?’

‘Passenger Locator Form.’

‘Oh, yes.’ I scrolled through my emails to find the form and presented my battered phone screen to the official man.

‘This is tomorrow. The date.’

‘Oh, yeah, sorry, the online form wouldn’t let me pick the 11th for some reason so I had to put the 12th.’

‘I can’t let you on the plane.’

Of course he was joking. You know when security guards do that thing where they pretend you can’t do something or can’t go in, and they let you look all worried and helpless for a bit before cracking a big smile and telling you to loosen up? Well yeah, this dude was obviously doing that. It irritated the fuck out of me, as it always does, but I smiled knowingly and gestured to move past.

But then I realised this wasn’t power tricks: ‘you can’t get on this flight; you put the wrong date’.

My smug, joyful heart dropped straight to the pit of my stomach. Tears instantly pricked behind my eyes, words of protest scrambling to form a sentence on my tongue. It’s okay, I told myself; you haven’t started the pleading process yet, and this deadpan slab of a man must be amenable to some strain of sympathy. I told him how sorry I was that I’d put the wrong date, it was just a technical issue with the form, that I had to get this flight to make my next connection; I had a volunteering placement and they were expecting me etc etc. Nothing stirred him, and he soon started to ignore me, letting the people behind me in the queue past.

Feeling utterly helpless I resorted to a display of full-on meltdown. It’s not that I didn’t feel the utter panic, upset and despair I was exhibiting, but I definitely accentuated the contortions of my face, the flowing tears, the dramatic knee dropping because yes I know it’s terrible and bad-feminist, but evoking pity to get your way really can be effective (so long as your intentions are good and you’re not hurting anyone, I don’t see anything wrong with this). Unfortunately, embarrassingly, I only evoked the pity of fellow passengers: the contemptuous Charon remained stony faced, even a little sickened by my sorry performance of hysterical helplessness, which he probably deemed typically womanish and irritating.

I know what it looks like: entitled voluntourist girl has excessively emotional breakdown at airport gate because she doesn’t get her way. That’s how I imagined the tabloids heading my story if I were a little bit famous and anyone cared. And to be fair it isn’t so different from how it looks — I’d had the wind punched out of me because I was used to this stuff being a breeze so long as you do the bare minimum to prepare.

But then I thought fuck me what about these people who I’m supposed to be going out to help? Their lives literally depend on crossing borders. They must practically expect to be denied security and safe passage, to anticipate hostility and rejection because so often they get it: and still they cross oceans.

At the time though, I noted this thought but shelved it to unpack later. Right then I lacked the strength to scrutinise my privilege, and sat down by the closed gate to have a good sob. I called home and Dad told me to stop crying because he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Someone gingerly approached me saying excuse me, is this your passport? I laughed a little through the tears and thanked them. I must have dropped it somewhere when I was busy melting down. When a different official man appeared by the gate, I asked him for advice about what I could do. He told me I could still get on the next flight to Athens. He checked and the next flight was at 7pm the next evening. It was a long wait, but at least I would make it, and then rearrange a new connection flight to Chios Island. The sickness in my stomach began to unfurl, replaced by the dull but doable prospect of waiting in Bucharest Airport for 24 hours.

But wait, he said, hooking me with a catch to fling me back to limbo. ‘When does your COVID test expire?’ I checked my certificate. ‘3pm tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you have to get into Greece before 3pm then. I’m sorry, I have to go.’ His heels clipped down the shiny hard corridor, and I sat hopelessly scrolling lastminute.com for creative ways to enter Greece before 3pm as the airport drained of people and the electric lights glared brighter overhead. Finally I found a flight to Istanbul, from where I could get a flight across to Chios by noon. It was painful spending another £140, but I had little choice at that point, and breathed a sigh of relief once my confirmation email came through.

I curled up on the floor feeling depleted, and it wasn’t long before an airport police officer walked by and told me I couldn’t lie on the floor. He asked me where I was travelling. I told him my situation, and how I had finally managed to book a flight to Chios via Istanbul. You cannot do that. What, what do you mean, I’ve booked it? The Turkey-Greece border is closed. My heart started accelerating. ‘But I’ve booked my flight?’ I showed him my cracked phone screen, grasping onto the fast fading security of the confirmation email. He shook his head. ‘They will not let you through unless you are a national.’ A thin sweat broke at the back of my neck and I felt instantly sick again. I started pacing and tapping pointlessly into my phone. Then I sat down on the floor and cried and laughed.

He led me to an office at the back of the building and telling me to wait outside appeared to discuss my fuck up with his police pals in Romanian, who eyed me suspiciously through the doorway. He returned, and stern but kind helped me go through my options, like a professional doctor considering treatment options with a patient. It boiled down to staying in Bucharest and getting a new test, or admitting defeat and getting the next flight back to London. Crossing the Romanian border was a risk, because I wouldn’t be allowed to cross back over until I had a boarding pass for a new flight and then there was the cost of accommodation, and the overwhelming prospect of looking for a COVID test centre in Bucharest. I went with defeat. I booked the 6:40am flight back to London through my budget airline app, not a little devastated my plans had come to this, but resigned to the prospect of going to bed for a week.

I bought a few bottles of water before the shops closed, based myself by a plug socket, sanitised my hands and took out my tiny bottle of lavender essential oil and took some deep breaths. I called home again, chatted to Mama for a bit. As we were talking my phone pinged. An email from kiwi.com: ‘Just to inform you that there was a technical error with your booking for flight 06:40 Bucharest (OTP) to LHR. Please see below for your refund options. We’d love to hear your feedback!’ My heart juddered into overdrive again. Mama, I can’t do this. Am I ever going to get out of here?

After trying and failing to rebook the flight with the airport’s patchy wifi, Dad had to book a flight for me on his computer from home. The flight is to London Heathrow at 4pm tomorrow. You have a one hour stopover in Zurich, Switzerland. Try and find somewhere to get some sleep, sit tight.

12th February, 2021

It wasn’t a huge airport with flights 24/7; there was a gap between midnight and 6am when no flights were scheduled. There was perhaps one other traveller in the whole airport, and then a handful of cleaners shuffling by with mops and hoovers eyeing me pitifully.

The police officer men had gone home for the night, so I curled up on the cold hard floor — the seats were separated by iron armrests to prevent anyone lying across them — with my head on my suitcase, hugging my backpack to me and stuffing my phone, passport and wallet inside my jumper. My nerves were too jangled to sleep and my stomach now rippling in a permanent state of unease. I stared at the speckled floor for an hour with no desire to sleep.

Eventually I decided to move, to break up the wait till tomorrow afternoon into manageable sections differentiated by new areas of the airport. Down an escalator past Victoria’s Secret. There was no one about, only the distant whir of a hoover at the far end of the hallway below. Row upon row of neon and pastel lace underwear hanging in the wide open shop. I thought about it, but then I thought that with my luck I would probably be arrested for stealing a pair of knickers and detained in Bucharest. I also remembered that I hate Victoria’s Secret. Instead I walked through the duty free perfume section and spritzed myself excessively with Tommy Girl because it had been my mama’s signature perfume when I was little.

I found the Exclusive Business Important Person Lounge, and the door being open and no one at the front desk, I slipped through, nestled gratefully into one of the sofas and soon felt sleep begin to tug me under. I might have been asleep for 10 minutes or an hour when I felt someone probing my leg. I recoiled and blinked my eyes open, experiencing that emotional adjustment when you wake and realise it was just a bad dream and everything is OK, but reversed. She said, it’s 45 euros for four hours. She actually had the card machine in her hand. I gathered myself and returned to the part of the airport where you could sit on a cold hard floor for free. Weak and exhausted I kept unnecessary vigil over the runway by a large window, watching as the light leaked impossibly slowly into the sky.

The time eventually came to board the Swiss Air flight to Zurich. On the plane I was relieved to be saying goodbye to Bucharest Airport, but overwhelmed by sadness when I remembered how stupidly excited I had been 24 hours before. Face mask up and sleep mask down, I tried to sleep but just sobbed silently. It must have looked ridiculous, the shape of a face trembling pathetically behind a mask. Then at some point I felt suddenly awake and refreshed by such a clear conviction that I would make it to Chios. I took my sleep mask off and wrote down the affirmation in my notebook.

As the plane descended into Zurich and I could make out the snowy tops of the Swiss mountains through the windows. We were about to land, but then the pilot abruptly pulled up and circled widely round to try again. I checked the time and began to worry that I would miss my connection flight to Heathrow. Sure enough when we landed I had a text from the airline telling me they had transferred me to a flight at 9am the next morning because they didn’t think I would make my connection flight.

I went through security feeling dirty, limbs aching, eyes stinging with tiredness, but at this point basically unphased because I’d stopped expecting things to go right. Immediately after security was the gate where my original Heathrow flight was still boarding. I approached the gate with a big grin, ‘Hi! I’m supposed to be on this flight!’ I explained how my airline had transferred me to a flight for tomorrow morning as a precautionary measure, but I was here now so wasn’t that great I could get on the plane! They explained back that it would take up to half an hour to transfer me back to this flight, and by that time the flight would have left. ‘I understand your frustration. We can offer you a hotel voucher if you make your way to Transfer Desk A’. Transfer Desk A it is!

I felt like Alice tripping from one bizarre circumstance to the next, not failing to take in as I walked down the glassy corridor just how beautiful Zurich Airport was. Definitely the most beautiful airport I’ve ever seen, so clean and expansive and organised. And hey, at least they understood my frustration!

Swinging through the glass door at the end, the woman at the border control desk took me in from afar. ‘Hi I’m looking for Transfer Desk A’. She eyed me suspiciously and I stared sleepily back at her. A streak of her blonde hair was dyed pink. ‘Love the pink!’ I felt high on exhaustion. She ignored me. Asked me some questions about where I’d come from and where I was going and I explained my predicament to her. She considered, then said, ‘well, your passport alone does not allow you to cross because it is not from a European Union country’. I took a moment to take it in, swallowed. ‘Wait, so you mean this is a BREXIT thing?’ I said, practically hissing the B-word. She nodded, looking a little alarmed. ‘Okay well, seeing as I didn’t actually vote for Brexit, could you let me past?’ She looked confused, and I rested my elbow on the counter and stared into her eyes which maybe made her uncomfortable or she took pity on me or she just couldn’t be bothered with my shit. She stamped my passport loudly and ushered me through. Thank you, I mouthed.

At Transfer Desk A I did some yoga stretches in the queue. It felt good. I cracked some joints. Breathed deep into my sore muscles. Got some weird looks. At the desk, I said I would like a hotel voucher please. I was expecting refusal but the efficient woman checked my boarding pass and started printing out the hotel voucher. ‘So your flight is at 9am tomorrow.’ ‘Yuhuh.’ ‘Can I just see your PCR test please?’ I handed over my crumpled negative COVID test certificate. ‘There is one problem. This test will not be valid by tomorrow morning.’ I made a grimace. ‘Yikes. What am I supposed to do?’ ‘I think you will need to get another test here, we have a test centre in the airport. Let me check with my colleagues.’ Through the office window I watched the three smartly dressed women confer, occasionally looking up at me.

Listening to their muffled German through the glass I suddenly saw that Greece was back on the table: if I have to get a COVID test here, then I might as well get a flight to Athens rather than London. I explained my intentions and they told me that yes I could there were flights to Athens most days. I thanked them, blew them kisses, and went to catch the tram to my hotel.

In my hotel room I booked my flight to Athens for 7pm in two days’ time to allow for the COVID test to come back and completed the damn PLF form, twice, with the utmost precision and care. I soaked in the bath for half an hour, went downstairs for a beer and ordered more food than I could eat, then fell into a deep refreshing sleep. I dreamt that I dropped my crystals on a gutter and they just happened to fall on the slats.

13th February, 2021

The next morning I took the tram back to the airport to spit in a tube and pray to the moon I hadn’t picked up COVID somewhere along my hellish journey. I thought about the Bucharest Airport floor. The result wouldn’t come back until 22:00, so I went out for a walk in the afternoon. The air was freezing, clean, drinkable and the sun bright as I walked along a river path. I bought a small bottle of red wine and a lighter at a supermarket, and then ordered some greasy, warm spring rolls from a Chinese takeaway which I ate on the walk back.

Back in my hotel room I began to feel anxious about my result, thinking how utterly fucked I would be (financially) if it came back positive. I did a little ritual with a tarot card, lavender oil, moonstone and my opal bracelet at the window sill. A huge hawk flew close by the window afterwards. Manifest manifest.

At 22:00 exactly my beautifully presented Swiss COVID test certificate arrived in my inbox: negative. I did a little dance in my room.

14th February, 2021

One of the best Valentine’s Days. I took a long hot shower, washed my hair, moisturised, applied make-up, got into comfortable clothes and took the tram to Zurich Airport for the last time. I arrived 5 hours early for my flight. I’ve always been the type to allow extra time for flights and appointments, and this experience hasn’t really helped me to ease up on that front.

As I’ve said it was a beautiful airport, so I was happy to wait. I watched the sun set behind the impressive row of uniform red and white aeroplanes, golden light spilling through the glass onto the cool marble floors. I ate a pot of carrot soup and watched the departures screen shuffle about; each flight had either gate information or a time when gate information would be provided. And above the screen was stencilled in clear bold lettering the exact time it takes to walk to each gate. These details are probably standards in most airports, but just then no detail that made my journey easier was lost on me.

It never felt so sweet to board a flight, because up until I crossed the gate’s threshold I was convinced they wouldn’t let me on. I even got to sit by the emergency exit which meant more legroom and the whole row to myself. As the plane took off I looked down at the glistening web of Zurich in the dark and listened to Bakar’s Hell N Back. Then I read the first chapter of The War on Women about female genital mutilation, which made me cry and feel determined in an obsolete way.

Upon landing in Athens Airport, we were picked at random to file into a COVID-testing queue. I was picked. The nurse motioned me to open wide, peered in and poked a swab into my mouth and then abruptly rammed it into the back of my throat. I gagged and coughed in her face. ‘Sorry’. She frowned at me and waved me on, and then shouted something over her shoulder in Greek.

12 hour stopover. I found a quiet spot, ate a sandwich and watched a bad film. That killed one and a half.

15th February, 2021

At 4am I gave up trying to sleep across two seats, and bought a hot chocolate. Soon after they started playing relatively loud pop music between public health announcements to please wear a face mask and keep 1.5 metres apart. I was exhausted and paranoid I’d lost something, constantly checking my pockets and bag.

By the time I found my gate the smoky blue dawn outside was scratched with two patches of pink. Some big mountain on the horizon which probably had ancient mythological relevance but I was too tired to care.

The plane to Chios was about a third full. I seemed to be the only non-Greek. It was an old, small plane with two seats per row, and it shuddered just standing in the wind. The woman next to me was afraid of flying and kept crossing herself which put me vaguely on edge, but I didn’t have the energy to seriously engage with fear.

We made the passage over the swelling Aegean sea, landing clumsily in the tiny airport no bigger than a petrol station. I stepped off the plane and walked across the tarmac, the wind nearly blowing me over.