If you had asked me two months ago, what will happen tomorrow, I would have told you that we will start our trip around the world. Now I can tell that I canceled this week our starting flight to Lisbon. Which was a real sad moment for me, as I planned this all in my head for years. Somehow this sounds strange but with the cancellation all felt real. I mean the decision we had to took already weeks ago, but now with the day came it became reality. We will not start the adventure of our life, we will be still stuck at home in Germany for an undefined time.
Even that every country has its own phase of the pandemic and with that own rules, international travel is still deferred for tourists. Over 90% off the worldwide airplane are on land. The international worldwide travel warning was extended to the 15th June. It is still really unclear if any travel can happen this year. Some countries are already pushing forward for opening the borders and let tourist in again. Question would be, how can tourism look like if you need to keep a distance of 1.5 to 2 meters and wear a face mask inside.
The majority of the countries are still doing rescue flight for tourist that are stranded worldwide. With that in mind, it is hard to imagine how we have in a soon future a normal tourism again. I mean it is all so wired. Looking outside the window things look so normal, like always. But now with the face mask obligations in shops, all out of the sudden it is different. I mean there is nothing really to complain about in Germany. From all the countries in Europe, we are the one with the most privileges of going outside. Looking to our Italian and Spain neighbors, which were not allowed to go out for 7 weeks. I really felt for them, when the Spain government started to allow last week, people to go outside for one hour a day.
I guess it is mainly a mental thing at the moment. Being used to do anything, go anywhere, be free to decide and then in a development of just one week, down to zero. I would have never guessed in my life that all of this would affect the world like it did. There is no country which were not affected or closed borders and hinder tourist from going in or out. I mean on the pro side of all of this, is that we were not in the middle of our travels and got stuck somewhere. This is the tricky thing with leaving everything – what we planned. There is at the beginning (end) nothing to go back to. Which is mainly the point, just let go and wander but all of this comes also with a price. Our price is a nearly empty apartment and the uncertainty when travel can happen again.
Next week we start week eight of the look down in Germany. Still in home office, still no family and friends visit. Living in a social digital world only.
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