It is March 2020. I am reading the news on my phone after my work mate Graham has stated this: “New Zealand has just shut their borders for travellers indefinitely.” New Zealand themselves are saying you shall not pass. Not wanting to believe what I’ve just heard, I continue looking at my phone only to have to read the headline myself. My fingers start to shake, my hands shiver. My heart is racing and breaking into pieces at the same time. I am trying to keep my cool in the office as I am just about to leave for the day anyway. Just before I’ve got out of the door, I hear my work mate Jim in the rear back of the office space say “Oh Graham you just had to ruin her day, didn’t you!”
Obviously, it was not Graham ruining my mood that day, but the news about New Zealand I was reading meticulously after I have left work. All my plans to escape the seemingly never-ending grey, triste and grim city life of Liverpool I’ve had to experience for the past four years and six months have been shattered by this and a whole lot of other headlines to follow. Guys, it has been a long four years and a half for me!
Everything had been arranged
Dan, my boyfriend, and I have been planning that escape for quite a while: In June 2020 we would have travelled back to New Zealand for the winter season, see friends and go shredding for a few months before we would have moved on to Melbourne, Australia, in October of the same year where he’s got a PHD spot at the Uni of Melbourne lined up.
In order to pursuit this plan, in January already I had quit my job in order to leave in May – I wanted to make sure that I can be involved and help with the recruitment process for my replacement as my office team have been nothing but lovely, kind and supportive from the day I started and despite my dislike of Liverpool itself, I loved my work and team to my bones and did not want to leave them hanging in any way. Besides organising everything in the UK, I also already got in touch with my Kiwi friend Caity in time and made living arrangements for our stay in Wanaka, bought a new snowboard and snowboard boots and booked and paid for flights, too. Absolutely everything needed has been arranged for our big lifechanging move. But, most importantly, I got so excited about that final escape that I have almost forgotten or maybe rather ignored all the pain living in the city of Liverpool has caused me. (Sorry Scouse-fans, Liverpool is just not my thaaang.) The closer it got to the final date of departing, the happier and more ecstatic I got, day by day.
So, that day in March I learned about New Zealand’s news with Australia following suit, you can imagine, it was not the happiest of my moments in 2020. And mentioning March 2020, as we all know, obviously, it has gotten downwards from there for all of us.
I was lucky though!
Really? Yes, I was one of the lucky ones in an unlucky situation of a global pandemic and in a country where the political leaders did not seem to get their shit together at least not in the beginning of the Covid outbreak.
After handing in my notice with my employer in the beginning of the year and after having started recruiting for my replacement as well, I had a bit of what I would have expected to be an awkward conversation with my managers in around April asking politely for not kicking me out please. Well, luckily it turned out not to be awkward at all and also, I was going to get all the support I could have wished for: We postponed the recruitment process and they kept me on. What a relieve that was after reading everywhere people losing their jobs, getting furloughed almost indefinitely with the unemployment rate going through the roof! Even with all my previous plans shattered, I still was very, very lucky and I am so grateful about it.
Plan B, C, D… “Are we at plan F now?”
After the gazillionth day of lockdown and restrictions in Liverpool, the whole country, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, the world, Dan and I decided to leave the city anyway and move abroad, not quite as we planned but at least as part of moving forward with life. You gotta do what makes you happy, right? As we know travelling, holidays, trips abroad are a bad idea during Covid times, we made the decision to fully move, a) that counts as essential travel, b) we’re no idiots and didn’t mean to travel around throughout this pandemic anyway.
So, in October 2020 we started to plan three months ahead for leaving the UK in January which included finding a tenant for the house, packing up our belongings to eventually ship to Australia (still crossing my fingers for this to work out) as well as organising storage and transport for it. However, back in October we also were naively thinking that for January we could pick a destination where we can and want to stay to sit out this pandemic or at least until Australia will open the borders for us. Oh man, were we wrong and so wrong!
Plan A was screwed. We came up with plan B after Australia and New Zealand shut us out: Moving to the French Alps and stay there until the global situation has calmed down. That sounded easy, not extravagant at all as France is just around the corner from the UK. Focussing on that plan until end of December it slowly started fading away as France shut the borders to all travellers from the UK due to a new Covid variant which was found in the South of England. And so, France said no, no, no.
With France being shut we looked at other options and countries to move to: Plan C was moving to Thailand – they just offered a long-term visa for visitors (I think for 12 months) before they’ve shut the borders to the UK as well and also said nope to the pope for the same reasons as France did. Getting to plan D now, relocating to Sweden – well, that was close but no cigar! We eyed up the second week in January to move away from Liverpool. Two weeks before that date (two weeks!) and just after I found a rental place to stay in Ara, Sweden also shut their borders to people from the UK and said no way, Jose.
“We are cursed”, I said. Every country we’ve named shut their borders right after. You can’t make this shit up. Thanks to Whitley Neill and my friends from Schweppes every now and then I managed to keep my calm – you had to take it with humour and a strong gin and tonic you see. We were all ready to move, I quit my job (this time for real), we were all packed up, the house has been done up for renting out, we organised a letting agency and found a tenant to move in by the 15th of Jan – we had to be out of our accommodation by then, but still didn’t know where to go – quite ironic, you would think the destination would be the one and steady variable in that equation. There was always the option to stay in the UK for a bit longer I guess, but with lockdowns, contact restrictions and hotels being closed that wasn’t simple maths to solve.
Eventually and by Saturday, January 9, there were two countries available which we would be happy to move to long-term: Mexico and Egypt. After the PCR tests came back negative and after checking out Sliders Cable Park online, we booked flights to Hurghada for the next day and left on that Sunday for El Gouna, Egypt. Plan E it was, E stands for El Gouna now. And, we have not regretted it ever since.
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