Stressful travel, much?

I cried in public in an airport this morning.   Some folks will wonder exactly what went down, especially my family, and my brother who I was not supposed to visit. 

So Germany wanted a Personal Locater form.  This requirement is not actually spelled out on any of their travel sites, anywhere, and may just apply if you are coming from the UK (Note to fellow travelers, check requirements for your home country AND where you have been the last 14 days.  That said, I did, and kept getting stuff that said that that was true UNLESS you had a vaccination card. 

Nope, I needed one.   It took me 45 minutes to find it and fill it out (that last part was not actually that difficult, as I had all the info I needed.  By that time I had missed my flight.   The next one Ryan Air could put me on was on Tuesday.

I was leaving Hamburg for Rome on Wednesday.  That along with a new requirement in Italy for quarantine if you have been in the UK, meant there was no way in the world I could make it to Hamburg.  This was when I cried.  By the way, I was not alone.   At least 15 other people while I was there were doing the same thing I was, and someone actually gave me the link; I would NEVER have found it on my own.  It wasn’t on RyanAir’s pages, and the German travel pages say that it doesn’t apply if you have vaccines, but it actually does, at least traveling from Edinburgh.

So I booked new tickets to Rome.  And proceeded to work on fulfilling all the requirements for Rome.   I needed an address, so I booked an apartment.  As I was working on that, the apartment canceled on me, telling me that they had no availability until August 24 (despite it coming up on the booking.com website.  And they charged me a 40 pound cancellation fee.  

I booked another apartment in Rome.   I sent a customer service request to Booking.com (which, by the way, they handled very quickly, beginning the process of a refund of the 40 pound fee right away!)

I got a Covid test, since it is required for Italy.   I filled out the locater form (which requires the Covid test AND the address where I will be quarantining (5 days this time, not 10, at least.) )

I cannot tell you the stress with which I approached the check in desk for my first Air France flight.   I can’t remember being so tied up in knots.   Or the sense of relief when she printed off my boarding passes and said, “You’re good to go!” 

This is not, by far, the worst day of my life.   I WILL see my brother just not for as long, and not at the same time I planned.  And now I know where the German locator form is (https://www.einreiseanmeldung.de/#/)

And I get to spend 5 days releasing all this stress in an apartment in Rome. Don’t yet know how I will do food, though.