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The majority of people decided not to travel during Covid. I when possible and respecting all directions, I did. But I didn’t take planes or go out of Europe.
This was a two-week, solo trip by public transport in August 2021 between Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg.
The destinations were.
- Nuremberg
- Frankfurt
- Cologne
- Antwerp
- Bruges
- Ghent
- Brussels
- Luxembourg
- Trier
- Stuttgart
- Munich
Here is the itinerary on my maps.
In that summer we were still in the middle of the pandemic; there was theoretically the possibility to move, but with many constraints and risks. I had no desire to find myself positive abroad or at the airport before a check-in. But at the same time I intended to make the most of the many vacation days I had accumulated; for this I was also pressed by my company’s personnel department.
In July I had toured Trentino with car and tent. There the risk there had been very minimal because in case of positivity I could have gone back with my car and in any case no one would have asked me to tampon. For August I decided to take this touring trip that I had had in my head for years, but that I was not inspired to do by car, having mostly cities as destinations, so traffic and difficulty in parking. I booked tickets with a well-known international bus company for the longer transfers, while I decided to use the train for the shorter ones in Belgium.
Traveling during covid, the problem of various regulations
In the preceding weeks I had been constantly monitoring developments on Covid-related proceedings in the various countries. I had already gotten the idea that in Belgium and Luxembourg they had a very quiet attitude, while in Germany they did not. But I had not yet realized that beyond entry into the country, there were even substantial differences in the various federal states.
I had recently been vaccinated with regular green pass, but on the very day of departure, the Germans changed the entry requirements. Possession of a fresh negative swab result had also become necessary! At that time people were beginning to have difficulty booking one, and the do-it-yourself ones did not count. Fortunately I found a pharmacy available a few hours before departure, I cannot tell you the anxiety in the parking lot waiting for them to call me .A positive would have compromised everything and trashed bus and accommodation reservations.
I left in the evening from Bologna and arrived in Munich in the morning. But at the border they made us get off and go through a cordon of policemen with machine guns slung over our shoulders, to view our documents; one guy was stopped and they wouldn’t let him pass.
Visit to Nuremberg
From Munich just enough time to stretch my legs by changing stations and I headed straight to Nuremberg, a city in which I had been interested for some time, especially for its past.As in all German cities there is a certain historic rebuilt very well as it was in the Middle Ages; it is distinguished by the river that runs through it and the walls. On my way back to the hostel (lodgings are expensive) I found shelter in a hallway just below the walls because of a flood, I didn’t realize that that was also a kind of mini-red-light district; there was no one a round and I saw one of the girls sweeping her window.
I went to where the famous trial of the hierarchs had been held and especially to the huge space where the Nazis held their national congresses. With a thousand thoughts I ate a ‘salad sitting on a step in the very space where the speeches were held and where old buses now park there.
As mentioned above, there were different rules in each German federal state, and because they were constantly changing, it was not easy to keep up with them. Tempted by a fantastic window display on my way up to the castle, I was literally kicked out of a pastry shop because I did not have the ffp2 mask (in Italy they all still fit). Even at the castle, after a long line (they were waiting for someone to come out to let other visitors in), they would not let me in without the ffp2, but at least they were selling them.
The severe buffer
For the next night in Frankfurt I was to submit a new negative swab; since there was a covid center right next door to my lodging, I thought I would ask for information. I was greeted by a stern, clean-shaven big man, unwilling to give information that he evidently took for granted.
It also seemed normal to him that I walked out the door, downloaded an app and with that booked the swab there for 5 minutes later. After the test, confident that I would never see him again, I decided to wait for the result by walking in the footpath outside the walls. But gosh, after half an hour still nothing! And it seemed very strange because I should have seen the outcome in the app after 10 minutes. I made many input attempts. The word pass should have been my date of birth, maybe the strict buffer had recorded it wrong?
In spite of myself, I had to go back to him, who did not greet me in a friendly manner, and he looked at me even worse when I asked him if perhaps he had misrecorded my date of birth. He dismissed me with disdain, explaining that in dates figures should be spaced by dots. What a figure.
Next stage
Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent
Countries visited in my travel stories
Anecdotes, divided by type in travel narratives
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