Hey Europe! We’re Back!

25 August 2021.

Pre-trip excitement was laced with anxiety as our departure approached. Ever-changing flights, rising COVID-19 cases, and shifting entry restrictions made the last few weeks agonizing. Would our flight leave? Would it change again? Would the countries allow us in without quarantining? Did I fill out all the right forms? 

What used to be a simple trip — showing up for the flight and flashing a passport at immigration control — has transformed into a game of “Who’s on First?” Flying into London without quarantine would require a pre-trip negative test, but Italy would require quarantine if we so much as passed airside at Heathrow, unless we had 14 days in a “safer” country before entering. Switzerland was fine with our stopping at Heathrow, but it would require three flights over 24 hours to get from PDX to Geneva. Three hops is, from prior experience, exhausting. Not interested. 

We settled on flying from Seattle to Frankfurt and spending a night before taking a train to Switzerland. Easy. Ha! One week before we were to fly, Germany declared the US a high risk country. Luckily, for the duly vaccinated, all we had to do was register our US vaccination status in a German government website which then spewed out a QR code and no quarantine was required. 

The Swiss also have a well-defined system for getting a so-called COVID Pass (also called a Green Pass or Pass Sanitaire or COVID Passport depending on the country) in the form of a QR code on our phones. We were able to apply to the Cantonal authority in Valais prior to travel, uploading our vaccination proof. In 48 hours we had our QR codes that are necessary for entering some stores and restaurants throughout the country. It is my understanding that the Swiss-issued QR code is valid throughout the European Union so may be usable in Italy and France as well. We shall see about that in the weeks to come.

Even immigration officers are confused. We flew into Frankfurt non-stop from Seattle and immigration scoffed at the Einreiseanmeldung forms we flashed with our passports. “You don’t need those. The US is not a risk country,” he said. Not to be argumentative with an immigration official, I joked that indeed the US was very dangerous and Germany has required these since August 15. One of his colleagues backed me up. After our passports were scanned and the officer was contemplating giving me the stamp while her cohort scanned Ric’s, I tried out my ancient and rusty university German, querying “All ist gut?” The immigration official who had scoffed at our forms replied, “All ist gut. You are not the criminals we are looking for.” Who knew German immigration had a sense of humor?

The flight from Seattle on Condor was only 20% full, much to our surprise. I have been tracking this flight for weeks to see if it was ever cancelled and it was not. There must be a lot of cargo business to allow a 767 to fly that route daily with so few passengers. Likewise, our train from Frankfurt to Bern was not full. The Hauptbahnhof was not as busy as we would expect on a business day at 0800, although I have read that Germany is thriving and people are working. Like in the US, WFH must be keeping the office workers cooped up. 

And so it begins. We will spend all of September in Switzerland, primarily in our home-away-from-home in Lauterbrunnen. We rent the same apartment every trip from a lovely British family (thanks James & Michelle!). We are so at home there we even store a Nespresso machine in their lockup. With a base camp established, we’ll take some overnight side trips to Kandersteg and Bettmeralp, and we will update our book, “Walking in Switzerland’s Berner Oberland” which was published just as COVID-19 started spreading in early 2020.

From Lauterbrunnen we can enter Italy without quarantine, unless something changes. The end of September we will go to our beloved Ortisei and the Alpe di Siusi. Inshallah we will also visit Paris and wrap up our trip with two weeks in England. Coming home just in time for Halloween.

We start, however, in the Saas Valley of Switzerland, a new-to-us and lesser-known area one valley over from Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Below, a few pictures from our first evening in Saas-Grund. We have never been in Switzerland this early in the summer. We usually arrive in mid-September. Thus the late summer gardens are flourishing (no drought here) and the evenings are milder. Outdoor dining is pleasant.

Stay tuned for updates!

Aufwiedersehen!