On Travelling in a Pandemic World, Overcoming Fears and the Future

If I go back to a few months ago, this Summer and all that came with it would seem rather impossible to accomplish. 

In April or even May, the situation in Italy concerning the Covid-19 was quite bad and no one could have imagined discos and pubs to be open again in late June or people freely travelling not only around the country, but abroad too. 

Nevertheless, from mid-June on the situation was getting safer and safer, hospitals were discharging more patients than they were admitting and less and less people were diagnosed with Covid. Everything went back to normal, and only the constant recalls of maintaining a safe distance from others and the mandatory face masks reminded us of what had happened only two months earlier. 

The past weeks, with the slow but constant rising in Covid cases and new measures implemented by the government to stop it, proved us that the fight against Covid is not over yet, and that we must keep our guard up. On the other hand, we now know many more things about the virus and about its prevention, so I believe a new full lockdown in Italy is not on the charts (for now), as long as we remember to wear masks and wash our hands frequently. This is to say, I believe our right to travel and explore the world must be protected at all costs, as long as it is safe for us and for the country we are visiting. 

I thought a lot about what I felt comfortable doing this Summer, as I didn’t want to endanger neither myself, people living with me or the places I would visit. We must always consider, in fact, that we may not only catch the virus, but we may unwillingly transport it, too; despite it seems that un-symptomatic individual have a very low viral load – meaning they are less infective that someone showing symptoms – it doesn’t mean they cannot be the carrier of a disruptive disease to a so-far-clean society. This issue does not present itself in Europe, where in most countries you can get a good and mostly cheap hospital assistance, but it is something to keep in mind when extra-EU borders will be open again and we will feel the call from other parts of the world. For this reasons I hope the most vulnerable countries will refrain from opening their borders again, even though I understand this is not possible on an economic level if these countries used to live on tourism. This is the same conundrum we are living in Italy and Europe, as, at least as far as my country is concerned, many people came back from their holidays abroad bringing the virus with them. We cannot close our borders again, as it would mean losing a huge part of our income which comes from tourism and holiday-makers.

In the end I thought one of the safest things I could do would be going to the mountains with some friends. Hiking, visiting small towns and mostly eating at our B&B meant we reduced our impact on the local community and we preserved our health, too; I am not sure if we wasted all our good efforts later on, when we moved on to Switzerland and spent three days in a hostel, but at least we tried. It is very difficult to adapt in a pandemic, and to find a balance between your need for distractions and your will to adhere to safety measures that are now required. 

Of course, March 2020 me would think I went crazy if she found out I would be sleeping in a hostel again, but hey, we learnt a lot during these past months, didn’t we? We also learnt to not let our mental health took a dive because of this pandemic, and to do all we can to prevent spreading any potential disease we might carry.

After spending some time up north with my friends and family, I came back to Rome as I am supposed to start working again in mid-September. I am looking forward to it as I am tired of being home with little to do but finding everyday new projects to amuse myself with. Hopefully the situation will continue being under control and we will not be forced to go into full lockdown again. 

In the past months, the future became smaller and smaller. It is very difficult to foresee what is going to happen in a month, or two, nevermind making plans for something further away than that. Everything can change from a week to the other, and we need to be flexible adapting to it without this getting over our head. It is indeed a different world from the one we were used to, and even if we may not completely realize it, Covid changed it deeply. Wheter it changed it in a good or bad way, it is only up to us to decide.