Hotel Covid
As I walked through the tunnel to the Check-in desks, a chocolate Labrador that had been straining on the leash of its owner, took a shit in the middle of the walkway. The owners quietly panicked as the dog kept shuffling along, excreting something that looked ungrabbable with a doggie-bag. The two daughters watched from the sidelines as their parents, exasperated, asked them to help with the mess. The daughters were beautiful, slim, fashionable and somehow exact, identifiably Swiss. The mum asked the Philipino cleaner trolley lady to help but she told them it wasn’t her job and trundled away.
I smiled as I walked past as the dog kept shitting. Somehow how the perfect dog with the perfect family in the perfect airport had so easily broken the facade.
I was flying back to Australia for the first time in almost a year and a half. The decision hadn’t been easy and the past months had been difficult. Since August 2020 I had crashed in the Alps in a paragliding competition and been helicoptered to hospital; shortly after I had a messy relationship breakup; then just after finding out I had contracted Boriolosis (Lymes disease) from a tick, I also got infected with Covid. My luck bucket was running low.
Australian quarantine laws made it hard to return with a mandatory 2 weeks in a hotel that would cost three thousand dollars. I decided I needed some family time in Australia and it was now or never as I needed to be back for a second foot operation in August.
I booked the flight on Monday, did a PCR covid test on Wednesday and on Friday I was at Zurich airport. I had been lucky and found a direct return flight for just over a thousand euros. On the same day I received an email from DFAT offering me a repatriation flight with Qantas for a $2150 one-way from Turkey to the Howard Springs facility in NT. The email advises the flights are without entertainment or catering or stowed luggage. I stuck with my Etihad flight that offered 30kg baggage; full catering and entertainment.
The thought of two weeks in a hotel room by myself was intimidating. I worked in Adventure tourism and spent most of my time outside in the mountains. How could I cope with living in a small room with no outdoor access? I had read accounts how people coped successfully living in concentration camps and jail. Two weeks seemed like a good amount of time to test
my self-resilience and mental strength.
.
Both my flights from Zurich and Abu Dhabi were almost empty, like the airports.
When you tell people you are travelling to Australia you normally get looks of jealousy as people imagine things like kangaroos, the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu or Bondi beach. The looks I got now were more like looks of sympathy as people imagined small dark quarantine hotel rooms.
We left Sydney airport in a bus under police escort. Army staff had loaded our bags onto the busses. Apart from our flight the airport had been dead quiet otherwise. A stark contrast to the chaos of family reunions, backpackers and taxi drivers normally mixing at the exit.
It was a strange feeling. You arrive home but you’re not welcomed. Normally I would grab my bags and walk an hour through leafy suburbs to my sister’s place in Petersham, enjoying the mixed smell of the Australian bush and the city. This time I’m in a quiet, half filled bus on the way to our unknown location. You can feel the apprehension as everyone is sitting, questioning what the next two weeks will bring.
I look at the other travellers and try to imagine. The overweight Indian couple with their duty free whisky I imagine eating and drinking their way through their stay, binging on Netflix. The Arab speaking soccer player next to me I imagine dribbling a ball around the room for hours on end. The mum that spent much of the flight verbally and physically abusing her 2 year old daughter… I don’t want to imagine.
And for me? I’m not sure what it will bring. The government info sheet talks about structuring your time, planning for the two weeks. My airhostess friend who is in Bali surfing said why plan? Just take it as it comes.
The world has changed and change is the only constant. Don’t fight it I know, just accept it. My Dutch housemate’s favourite expression is innovate or die.
My flight back to Switzerland is in 6 weeks time and the world will be different again. Covid brings more unknown to a world that was already a mystery to me. Life is a game with incomplete information and now even more so.
I write this sitting on the ninth floor in my hotel room looking over central Sydney. I wait for the knock on the door that will be either the lunch delivery or the Day 2 Covid test. Either one signals at least some excitement. I know I’m not alone and to some people this would be a luxury and at the end of the day, this was a choice I made.
Later in the evening the sound of bagpipes drifts up from the city below. I look down to the street and see my dad playing proudly, standing on the corner of Druitt street with my sister next to him. I’m trapped in a hotel but I know i’m in a lucky country. and i’m happy.
