Going back home: a troubled journey to Italy
I came back to Italy, to my family, a month ago. This after so many months stuck in the UK, while autumn, cold, darkness were undermining my mental health, and Christmas and NYE celebrations were not able to account any family plans.
On the 8th of January, I had my flight to Italy - after 3 flight cancellations (all made to spend the holidays at home!). I spent the all week on tip-toes, not even mentioning that I was actually travelling home to anyone, not even to my own conscience. In the meanwhile, regulations for quarantine and testing were keeping changing in Italy - ultimately, the famous "Save Christmas" Italian regulation, due to expire on the 6th, was extended to the 15th, and with it the compulsory quarantine of 2 weeks.
I went crazy also about the testing because apparently a negative covid test was required while boarding any plane - but no one could give proper info about whether a rapid test (free in the English city where I am living) was accepted or you had to go for a PCR one (private and expensive).
I took the gamble of the free rapid test, I said bye to my flatmate almost sure I was going to come back after few hours - either because the flight was cancelled or because the test was not accepted - and I went to the airport. I was so unfocused that I mistook the train, and I forgot some stuff at the security control.
When I was finally on the plane, test accept (well, not even really checked!), I released the breath that I was keeping in for so many days.
When landed, the airport was in an incredibly, traditional, kind of folkloristic Italian mess. Airport workers were just discovering, while we were entering the airport, that they needed to test us. They claimed that these were just enforced new rules - tbh I think they saw a flight coming from Manchester, they opened the encyclopedia and realised that Manchester was in the UK! As a note, a week earlier the news of a new Covid-19 variant from the UK came to the fore, scaring all the other European countries about how contaminating the UK could have been so far.
Airport workers said that they were setting up a test center - the day before I called the airport and they said the testing center was inside the airport and we would get tested as soon as landed. But apparently not!
People in the queue started getting nervous, jumping the queue, insulting the government, creating informal gatherings, mixing, mingling, not respecting any of the Covid measures (all very Italian!). Two toddlers escaped from their mothers and were caught by policemen who return them to the legitimate parents with a note of scolding!
When the test center was ready, we went through the document control. Policemen said that the covid test site was just after. I was one of the first in the queue, no one was leading us or telling us where we had to go. I suddenly realised that we are actually exiting the airport. As so, we reached the Arrivals. I searched for my parents, but I didn't want to lose my place in the queue, so I kept searching for this covid testing. Ah, the romanticism of meeting your dears after so many months!
The Covid test site was in a parking lot 300 meters from the exit of the airport. While I was heading to it - thanks to the help of a kind man who saw me lost - lots of my plane companions just disappear. They exit the airport as if no pandemic ever started.
I got my test, went back to the entrance, found my parents, got into an argument with my dad while he was arguing with my mum - mum saw me exiting the airport, and told that to dad. His reply was "no, it can't be our daughter. That girl is much slimmer!". On all this mess, the policemen, finally aware of the fact that people were just escaping the testing, were shouting in the hall of the airport: "who is from Manchester? Who is travelling from Manchester", and threatening people with fines that they wouldn't actually enforce.
It has been a crazy coming back. 2 weeks of boring quarantine had followed. 3 covid tests in few days would turn my nose into a clown nose. The italian sanitary system would call me more often than my boyfriend.
But then, lots of magic time at home!
I am posting this story only now, 2 months later, when I am back to the UK already. I kind of laught at it, now. But I was very angry for all the fatigue, mess, uncertainty of that trip. One of the many which followed and will follow.
What I am still angry at is the incredible inefficiency of the Italian system, and the incommensurable civic irresponsibility of my co-citizens, just escaping testing, tracing, and return-from-abroad procedures. Italy is facing now the third wave. More than 30% of the new cases are of the UK variant. Schools are closed again. Businesses are closed again. The country is shut down again.
Obviously this not only because of citizens returning from abroad. We could open the Italian debate on the second residences houses, on the ski resorts, on the uncontrolled freedom of these two months.
But the mess at the airport shouldn't have happened. It would have help, maybe just a little, but it would have.
«Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, |
| (Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, canto VI, vv. 76-78) |
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