With six days until flight departure, we’re surprised to find that we feel nearly as stressed this time as we did last August when we were waiting for our flight to Zagreb, wondering if we’d be able to get a timely Covid test, if the airlines would let us board, and if Croatia would let us enter the country without quarantine when we arrived.  There were so many uncertainties and things that might go wrong.  We really couldn’t believe it when we landed and were granted entry.  Our plan worked!

Somehow it feels nearly as precarious this time.  We haven’t really begun focusing on departure issues until the last few days, but now that we’re here there there are many things to do, validate and worry about.  It’s leading to some restless nights.

We’re working a floating task list, adding and subtracting items as they occur to us or get resolved.  Some recent activity:

• Yesterday we started calling pharmacies to find a source for N95 masks.  Finding none, we placed a rush order with Amazon and are having them shipped to our nephew Vance’s home, our final destination before preparing to leave.
• We rechecked departure requirements with our airline (United) and Netherlands’ entry requirements to confirm that we can board without a fresh Covid test.  We’ll of course keep checking up until the date of departure.
• We reviewed and tried to make sense of Belgium’s entry and quarantine requirements.  So far, so good - as long as the USA stays on Belgium’s ‘orange list’, we can enter without quarantine or new Covid testing as long as we’ve been vaccinated.  The declaration only gets updated on Fridays, so I think that if we make it through this weekend and our country is still orange, we can go to Belgium.
• We reviewed Belgium’s Covid situation, speculating on whether they’ll remain low enough so that we’ll be able to enter Germany from Belgium when that time comes.  Things look good so far; but again, this could change within the next two weeks so all we can do in the meantime is hope for the best and stay informed.
• We committed ourselves to this Belgium idea and booked cancellable lodging and purchased tickets for a train from the airport to Antwerp.  Booking the train was interesting and time consuming.  Trains can be booked online (through Thalys, a hi-speed network that services Belgium and France that I’d never heard of), but for whatever reason the transaction kept failing so I finally telephoned Belgium directly and ordered our tickets over the phone.  That was successful, although we stressed for several hours over the failure to receive email confirmation until Rachael suggested looking in the spam folder.

Is that it for now?  I think so.  I’m sure the next restless night will raise other issues to fret about though.  Like last summer, I doubt we’ll really start to relax until we wake up in Antwerp, amazed that we’re really there.

Heart

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