Wheelchairs Without Borders
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: That’s the million dollar question—where are we? At the time of this writing, we’re in Zurich, Switzerland, where it’s 5 pm on Thursday, April 1. We aren’t really supposed to be here, in more ways than one. We’re supposed to be in Iceland. Will we be there by this time tomorrow? Your guess is as good as mine.
Wheelchairs without borders
You know how, for the last year, I keep nattering on about how traveling during a pandemic is much more challenging than it used to be? And yet we keep traveling, and from a distance, it looks like we’re just carrying on as usual?
Well, let me tell you about today.
Last month, we applied for and were granted a long-term visa to Iceland. We booked our flights. We bought warm coats and long underwear. I tore a tendon, because that’s a fun complication, but you already knew that part.
So Monday we went to get the requisite pre-travel Covid test, assuming it would take 24-48 hours to get the results. Iceland requires a PCR test within 72 hours of departure, so with our 11pm (Bangkok time) departure on Wednesday, Monday at 11am made sense.
The first leg of our journey landed in Zurich sometime around 6am on Thursday; a little later than scheduled, which left us with very little time to make our connection to Frankfurt. I had prearranged ‘mobility assistance,’ so a nice man with an electric cart whisked us through immigration and security, and straight to our gate, since boarding had already started. But! The lady in the wheelchair gets to go to the front of the line. The gate agent started studying our documents (no one skims anything these days), but when she got to the printout of our negative Covid test, everything came to a grinding halt.
Germany has changed the rules, and as of midnight on Tuesday, even transiting passengers have to have a negative test (either PCR or antigen) taken within 48 hours. Ours was ... some arithmetical number of time zones and hours that equaled more than 48. I can no longer count.
So electric cart guy, who was apparently born with a VERY strong optimistic streak, announces that we can make it, and drives our little cart hell-for-leather to the nearest rapid testing site.
It hadn’t opened for the day yet.
The other site—the one that was open—was far. It is also possible that we crossed a border to get to it. Or possibly more than one. We were tired, it was early, and our very nice cart driver was doing all the explaining for us. In German.
But we got to the rapid antigen test site, where another very nice man stuck yet another swab up my nose (my 2nd covid test this week). We had the results on our phones within a few minutes, but now our cart driver got on the phone with his supervisor, who told him there was no way we could get back to the gate in time.
(Lee watched the flight on Flight Tracker, and personally, I think we totally could’ve made it with that guy at the wheel, but we were in no position to argue at that point).
There was a long line at the reticketing counter, so I was given a wheelchair, and we were deposited in some special waiting room that I think might have been specifically for handicapped people (or as they say in the UAE, ‘people of determination’). We waited for what felt like forever, probably because I was parched and had a caffeine-deprivation headache starting. Things were beginning to devolve.
Then a woman came in and kept coughing. She was also talking on the phone, and I could hear that she was all stuffed-up and nasally. I haven’t been in the presence of a person with a cold in over a year. At this point, I was about ready to roll that wheelchair out of there myself.
Luckily, a new (shift change, perhaps?) very nice mobility assistance person came in with a packet of papers and our new boarding passes. The good news: we’d been booked from Zurich to Munich, Munich to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Iceland. The bad news? Not until tomorrow.
So now, our original Covid test (the PCR one, which is what Iceland requires) was going to expire before this new ‘departure’ time.
By this time, our brilliant electric cart had departed, so new guy pushed me in the wheelchair (which was fine—I was just desperate to get away from coughing woman) to yet another testing site. The line was unbelievable. My wheelchair helper was on his phone telling someone about the line, and said it was like people were lined up to get free stuff. But he wheeled us straight to the front, helped us fill out another round of paperwork in German, and we went into the testing room (third Covid test of the week, not that we’re counting or anything). This was a variety of PCR test we hadn’t done before: spit in a tube.
(Those of you who have some experience with Covid tests may find this as curious as we did: our antigen test was a nasal probe, but our PCR test was a tube of spit. Seems backwards, but whatever.) We were promised the results on our phones by 5 pm.
There was some dilemma over where we would spend the night—technically, we’re not supposed to be in Switzerland, because the border is closed, but all that back and forth to the various testing sites complicated things, and the airside transit hotel would’ve required one more stamp in our passports than allowed. Besides, there is apparently no food or beverage being served airside, because of Covid, so we would’ve had nothing to eat or drink until the next day, maybe? I mean, aside from the excellent collection of Thai snacks Toby gave us when we left, of course. I figured it might not be helpful to mention that.
I dunno. It was complicated and confusing, and I really, really just wanted a cup of tea, or maybe a mocha.
A solution was finally worked out: we were allowed to stay in the airport Radisson, outside of security, but we couldn’t have our luggage. We could, however, keep the wheelchair until our next mobility assistance person retrieves us at 6 tomorrow morning. The last thing nice guy said, as he was leaving us in the lobby, was “remember—don’t go too far.” In case we forget we’re not technically in this country.
We dropped our backpacks off in our room, and immediately went in search of coffee. It turns out Lee can’t push a wheelchair with just one hand, so I had to hold both coffees (because take-away only) while we scanned the shops that were open in the area next to the hotel, debating whether we needed anything else in lieu of our luggage.
The only thing that occurred to me was underwear. I really don’t need much in life (besides my morning caffeine—duh), but I do like fresh underwear at least once a day. I was thinking maybe there’d be some random cheap ones in a pharmacy or some such, but lo and behold, there was a nice Swiss underwear store next to the coffee place. So Lee wheeled me in, and I immediately saw exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t look for my size, though, with a coffee in each hand, so I asked Lee to hold his cup. He didn’t hear me, and was trying to figure out how the sizing worked, which is really not his strong suit, and really, it would just be easier to do it myself if you’d just hold this cup of coffee so I can do it myself and ... he flung out a hand, hit the cup that I was trying to hand him, coffee went EVERYWHERE, I’m pretty sure we ruined about 18 camisoles, and now I guess we have to leave Switzerland and never come back.
Assuming we get on that plane tomorrow, though, at least I’ll be wearing clean underwear.
Take care,
Lisa
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