Why am I here!
I’ve been working in Italy for the past 6 weeks. When I say working, I’ve been mostly on furlough and hoping that we would be able to start a ski season. This may have been a forlorn hope but we needed to be in Italy before the UK exited the EU. If we’d arrived after 31st December we would have needed to fulfil various visa requirements.
In any event, as time went on it became increasingly unlikely that we would be getting any guests. We haven’t cancelled our ski programme but the decision was made that we would be sent home.
That said a number of my colleagues have elected to stay in Italy, France and Austria because they are enjoying being where they are and, in some cases, have nowhere else to go. For my Austrian colleagues this is an easier choice as their ski slopes are open and they are also free to move between the various ski areas as long as their purpose is skiing. I find this logic a bit odd but good luck to my friends who will no doubt keep producing jealousy inducing social content on a regular basis!
For me the decision to return home was a bit easier. I have done lots of ski seasons. I don’t feel I will miss out by not going to Austria to ski for a couple of months. I have enjoyed being back in the Dolomites (the best mountains!) but I was running out of things to do and there’s only so many pictures of snowy trees you can post on Insta (it’s 74). I also have a house in the UK with lots of home comforts. Also, by electing to go home now my company would be paying all my travel costs. If I stayed I would have needed to find my own accommodation and eventually get myself home at my own expense. In these uncertain times I really did not want that hassle. I do not have swagger and care abandon of youth on my side!
Preparing to go
How do you get back into the UK in our current situation? You will have read about this in the news if you have an interest in travel but in reality how does this work.
Firstly you need a negative Covid test. This has to be in English. Which is more difficult than it sounds. Again, I am fortunate to work for a company that has caring and supportive staff, who arranged all this quickly and efficiently. That said, I had to drive my three colleagues to Trento, approximately a 90 minute drive from Canazei, to get these. This was Thursday with a flight booked for the next day. To drive anywhere outside your local area in Italy you have to complete a self-certificate which states the reason for your travel. You can be, and are, stopped at any time by police checkpoints and have to show this form and confirm the necessity of your journey. A system that might be beneficial in the UK.
These tests are always quite nerve wracking. I really didn’t want to consider all the consequences of one of us testing positive as this would have thrown us all into literal isolation. I was convinced I had a sore throat the night before which automatically made me think I was positive even though we’d been very careful and the odds were very much in our favour.
If you’ve not had a Covid test you’re missing out on the opportunity of having something jabbed so far up your nose it also comes out of your mouth. That said the staff administering the tests were very friendly and considerate and we got the results within 30 minutes.
We were all negative – much relief.
Going
On Thursday afternoon I finished packing and cleaning my apartment. Next morning I loaded my mighty Fiesta. I was also picking up my colleague Will who had warned me that he had a lot of luggage. We managed to jam everything in relatively easily although Will’s ski bag could probably be donated to SeaWorld to help them transport Killer Whales to their well deserved freedom in the ocean.
We left at 9am and drove to Garda, where I left the car. We had a taxi to Milan Linate airport from there. Again this had all been arranged and well organised by my colleagues.
Understandably, the airport was not too busy. The check-in staff asked to see my negative English written Covid test and my Passenger Locator form. This form has been recently introduced. Basically you have to give your contact details and details of where you will be staying during your 10 day quarantine period in the UK.
In the airport you also have to wear one of the proper face masks not just one with a stupid pattern you bought off Etsy.
It was also good that before they boarded the plane they called out the names of people who were travelling solely with hand luggage so that they could check they had the correct documentation.
The plane was boarded, in seat order, from the back. The flight wasn’t full by any means and although I don’t know this for sure it looked like they had given at least a seat space between everyone on the plane. I had a row to myself! There were no snacks served on the plane. I’d also mistakenly left my iPhone in my rucksack, not in flight mode. But the plane didn’t fall out of the sky so I guess we dodged a bullet there!
Arriving
This was the part that concerned me having read some horror stories about what the Heathrow experience would be. We exited the plane in seat order from the front. I was row 8 so I was soon off the plane and doing that sprint/walk thing you do to get to passport control first without looking like you’re trying.
Being a veteran of working airport days for a tour operator I had been glued to Flight Radar prior to take off. We were coming in behind an Emirates Dreamliner (296 potential passengers) from Abu Dhabi and a Korean Air Airbus of indeterminate type, but maybe an A380, (a potential, although unlikely, 853 passengers), from Seoul. So I was concerned that I would be stuck behind a bunch of Love Island ‘Influencers’ intent on making a last ditch escape from Dubai and an unlikely horde of South Koreans escaping the relative safety of their homeland.
I’d also been messaged by a colleague who had arrived on an earlier flight and had been interrogated by border control. So I was getting more nervous.
Anyhow, mae-do meon-jeo maj-neun ge nas-da, as they say in Korea. The queue looked bad, like just getting into the entrance of passport control, bad. But it went down quickly. People were not socially distancing as much as I would have liked but that wasn’t unexpected. If anything the large throng of people may have meant a speedier exit for me as it looked like they just gave up on trying to question people individually. I was asked to show my Covid Test and Passenger locator to one of the attendants. But I don’t think he even really looked. So I’m fairly sure I could have just Photoshopped the documents if I had been that way inclined. I was sent to one of the auto passport controls and then I was in baggage reclaim.
It took me about an hour to get through the airport which was much better than expected. I got home about 2.5 hours later. I won’t describe how I achieved this leg of my journey as I didn’t check the legality of it and am maintaining some plausible deniability.
I am now ensconced in my house for 10 days, or 5 if have another brain scraping negative Covid test. My lovely sister had done lots of nice grocery shopping for me. I have warmth, a garden, a TV, crisps and the Internet. I’m still a bit jealous I’m not skiing but there is next season – and I’m optimistic for that!