So, here’s a little story of a Covid era adventure. I didn’t mention this last week, partly because I was somewhat nervous about it, and partly because I get the feeling that there are some here who will feel that this story is somehow indicative of personal failings on my part (I’m not saying that this would be unfair). I share now, however, because it might be of use or of interest to anyone else who may be in some sort of similar situation. Plus, the whole experience has, in some way, been liberating, and this feels like a big moment for me, and so maybe it helps others.
The Thursday before last I got contacted by a place in Istanbul about doing some work for them. It wasn’t training work, but more consultancy/curriculum development stuff. I assumed they meant that the work would be online, but when I discussed with them they said, no really we’d actually like you to come and work with us as we think it will be more productive. I responded that I didn’t think that was really possible, and that travel seemed a long way off, but they’d looked into it and discovered that at least theoretically it was possible. I’m not really in a position to turn work down at the moment, so in the end, with a great deal of trepidation (but at least with the knowledge that I’m fully vaccinated), I agreed. They wanted me to fly out last Monday, work Tuesday to Friday and then return home on Saturday. As it turned out, Turkey requires you to have had a PCR test up to 72 hours before arrival (regardless of vaccination status), and that wasn’t possible for me to arrange before Monday, so I had to leave on Tuesday instead. So, anyway, I won’t bore you with the whole test, results, etc palaver, but in the end I was on my way to Bucharest airport on Tuesday morning to catch a 9.30 flight to Istanbul. Various websites suggested that I arrive to the airport 4 hours in advance, but I felt that was a touch exaggerated, and I ended up arriving about 2.5 hours before my flight. Luckily, it turned out, because in fact there was absolutely nothing I could have done before check in opened, and check in opened 2 hours before the flight, so had I got there at 5.30 it would have been an incredibly long and boring wait. The departures board at Bucharest airport showed very few flights – for the whole day. In normal times this would have been the number of flights that would have been departing roughly every hour.
https://ibb.co/m5Zrj9Q]
[/url]
Check in was slower than normal, because there is extra paperwork. I needed to show my PCR test as well as a document I’d had to download and fill in for entry into Turkey. But it just took a bit longer, there was no real hassle involved. The security line on the other hand was, as you might expect, much much shorter than usual, because there were so few planes. My only real moment of hassle in the whole process was going through passport control - and this was not related to Covid, but to Brexit, which of course is the other thing that happened since I last flew. I was asked when I had entered Romania, to which I responded that the last time had been about 15 months ago, just before Covid shut everything down. Now I’m a citizen (sorry “subject”) of a third country, I’m no longer allowed to be in the country for more than 3 months a year, unless I have residency status – which obviously I do, so I had to get that out, and have it checked and inspected, and a senior-er person come over to check too.
Anyway, I got through, got on board eventually (plane was full), and bemasked flew over to Istanbul (there is no in flight service anymore). On arrival, Istanbul airport (unsurprisingly) was much busier than Bucharest, but the usually very long immigration queue was short and was only held up by me, because again we had a whole British passport moment. This time not Brexit related, but because Turkey currently doesn’t allow people to travel from the UK (Covid). So I had to explain that I hadn’t actually been in the UK since 2019, and eventually they let me go through (by the way, in case anyone is interested, I learned through this process that Turkey no longer requires a visa for UK citizens, which is a new thing I hadn’t known had changed. I used to have to get a new multiple entry e-visa every 6 months for about 20 euros a time)
So I arrived on Tuesday, just as the current spike in numbers in Turkey had provoked the government into shutting stuff down. Tuesday was also the first day of Ramadan. It was, let’s say, quite a time to arrive in the country. Cafes, restaurants, bars etc were all closed and only available for takeout. Places with tables outside you could eat at, but not sit down to do so (I’m not really sure how that helped stop the spread of covid, but hey). On Tuesday everything closed around 10 or later, but after Tuesday, it was more like 7. Supermarkets were a bit manic, especially just as curfew hour approached (anyone doing Ramadan for example, and who was having to go their place of work, would probably have an hour max to buy food for the evening after sunset). I got put in a flat, which was a good thing, because at least I could cook for myself in the evenings, though on a couple of occasions I got taken out for dinner, in secret, to restaurants in bigger hotels which had to remain open for tourists. Theoretically for guests only but I guess there are ways around that. My employers were very apologetic, and said that they were so sorry they had brought me when I couldn’t do anything (plus I think they really struggled with the natural Turkish need to be incredibly hospitable and the inability to easily be so). In fact it was basically fine from my perspective, I missed the opportunity to go out wandering and sit down for some amazing meze, but that aside, all was OK.
After I’d had to push back the work until Wednesday, the plan had been to shift to working Weds-Sat, but the weekend involved a whole new set of restrictions – basically the whole weekend was on a strict curfew from 10pm on Friday until 5am on Monday. Except for tourists (or at least anyone non-resident in Turkey). So, while I could have gone into the office on Saturday, nobody else could, so we did as much as we could in 3 days. On Saturday, I wandered around an empty city of 15 million people. This for example is Istiklal street at 11am on Saturday morning. Everyone familiar with Istiklal will know that it is probably not even this quiet at 4am on a Tuesday, and at 11 on a Saturday? It’s utterly rammed. Think of Oxford Street on a Saturday just before Christmas. And multiply by ten.
https://ibb.co/MpVxdt4]
[/url]
I wandered past the Galata Tower, which I’ve never actually been up before and discovered to my surprise that it was open. So, partly because it was cold and raining and partly because I thought it would be as good a time as any to go up it, I got myself a ticket (a new small wrinkle here when I had to produce a “HES Card” which I’d never heard of but turned out to be some form of internal covid-free certificate. But the guy in the ticket office looked up my passport number, and created a QR code of my HES which I then took a photo of (a photo of his phone screen) and then the rest of the day I could use that in the few places where I needed it). It was nice and warm inside, and there are places to sit, which was good. The viewing gallery was a bit of a write-off because it was so cold and wet, but I still did it, before retreating to the warmth and the benches. There were a few tourists around who were doing the same. (As an aside, the majority of tourists I encountered appeared to be Russian, and I learned that last week Erdogan and Putin had a spat over Turkey’s support for Ukraine joining NATO and now all flights between the two countries have been cancelled, so I have no idea how those people are getting home – probably some of them were Ukrainian, as my language skills can’t tell the difference between the two languages, but I’m sure at least some must have been Russian)
(Turkey as North Korea)
https://ibb.co/D9ytDGX]
[/url]
Wandered down to the Galata Bridge and across the Golden Horn, where to my surprise one or two of the fish restaurants were open, and I got enticed inside for some actual meze and even a beer. Then wandered up to Sultanahmet, the most touristy district, where it seemed actually most things were open, even carpet and leather shops, which don’t really seem like essentials, but hey. There did turn out to be quite a few tourists around. Nothing like normal obviously, but still more than I imagined.
Anyway, it was a weird, odd, peculiar, cold day to be in Istanbul.
Coming home last night was pretty smooth. Needed to prove I was resident in Romania to board the plane, and on arrival in the “yellow line” (for flights arriving from high Covd case countries – Turkey is currently number 4 in the world behind India, Brazil and somewhere else (the US?)), had to go and talk to a doctor (well I assume she was a doctor, she wore a white coat and a stethoscope), and show my vaccine certificate, and the form I’d filled in and she stamped me “Exceptat” (so I am excepted from quarantine).
A much longer post than i planned. But Tactical Genius has been telling me there is no reason I can't fly to the UK, and it turns out that it's actually pretty easy, so come May, I'll be over to meet up with my family and a few friends hopefully. I guess Thonning is still out of the question, but no matter. Soon.
The Thursday before last I got contacted by a place in Istanbul about doing some work for them. It wasn’t training work, but more consultancy/curriculum development stuff. I assumed they meant that the work would be online, but when I discussed with them they said, no really we’d actually like you to come and work with us as we think it will be more productive. I responded that I didn’t think that was really possible, and that travel seemed a long way off, but they’d looked into it and discovered that at least theoretically it was possible. I’m not really in a position to turn work down at the moment, so in the end, with a great deal of trepidation (but at least with the knowledge that I’m fully vaccinated), I agreed. They wanted me to fly out last Monday, work Tuesday to Friday and then return home on Saturday. As it turned out, Turkey requires you to have had a PCR test up to 72 hours before arrival (regardless of vaccination status), and that wasn’t possible for me to arrange before Monday, so I had to leave on Tuesday instead. So, anyway, I won’t bore you with the whole test, results, etc palaver, but in the end I was on my way to Bucharest airport on Tuesday morning to catch a 9.30 flight to Istanbul. Various websites suggested that I arrive to the airport 4 hours in advance, but I felt that was a touch exaggerated, and I ended up arriving about 2.5 hours before my flight. Luckily, it turned out, because in fact there was absolutely nothing I could have done before check in opened, and check in opened 2 hours before the flight, so had I got there at 5.30 it would have been an incredibly long and boring wait. The departures board at Bucharest airport showed very few flights – for the whole day. In normal times this would have been the number of flights that would have been departing roughly every hour.
https://ibb.co/m5Zrj9Q]
[/url]Check in was slower than normal, because there is extra paperwork. I needed to show my PCR test as well as a document I’d had to download and fill in for entry into Turkey. But it just took a bit longer, there was no real hassle involved. The security line on the other hand was, as you might expect, much much shorter than usual, because there were so few planes. My only real moment of hassle in the whole process was going through passport control - and this was not related to Covid, but to Brexit, which of course is the other thing that happened since I last flew. I was asked when I had entered Romania, to which I responded that the last time had been about 15 months ago, just before Covid shut everything down. Now I’m a citizen (sorry “subject”) of a third country, I’m no longer allowed to be in the country for more than 3 months a year, unless I have residency status – which obviously I do, so I had to get that out, and have it checked and inspected, and a senior-er person come over to check too.
Anyway, I got through, got on board eventually (plane was full), and bemasked flew over to Istanbul (there is no in flight service anymore). On arrival, Istanbul airport (unsurprisingly) was much busier than Bucharest, but the usually very long immigration queue was short and was only held up by me, because again we had a whole British passport moment. This time not Brexit related, but because Turkey currently doesn’t allow people to travel from the UK (Covid). So I had to explain that I hadn’t actually been in the UK since 2019, and eventually they let me go through (by the way, in case anyone is interested, I learned through this process that Turkey no longer requires a visa for UK citizens, which is a new thing I hadn’t known had changed. I used to have to get a new multiple entry e-visa every 6 months for about 20 euros a time)
So I arrived on Tuesday, just as the current spike in numbers in Turkey had provoked the government into shutting stuff down. Tuesday was also the first day of Ramadan. It was, let’s say, quite a time to arrive in the country. Cafes, restaurants, bars etc were all closed and only available for takeout. Places with tables outside you could eat at, but not sit down to do so (I’m not really sure how that helped stop the spread of covid, but hey). On Tuesday everything closed around 10 or later, but after Tuesday, it was more like 7. Supermarkets were a bit manic, especially just as curfew hour approached (anyone doing Ramadan for example, and who was having to go their place of work, would probably have an hour max to buy food for the evening after sunset). I got put in a flat, which was a good thing, because at least I could cook for myself in the evenings, though on a couple of occasions I got taken out for dinner, in secret, to restaurants in bigger hotels which had to remain open for tourists. Theoretically for guests only but I guess there are ways around that. My employers were very apologetic, and said that they were so sorry they had brought me when I couldn’t do anything (plus I think they really struggled with the natural Turkish need to be incredibly hospitable and the inability to easily be so). In fact it was basically fine from my perspective, I missed the opportunity to go out wandering and sit down for some amazing meze, but that aside, all was OK.
After I’d had to push back the work until Wednesday, the plan had been to shift to working Weds-Sat, but the weekend involved a whole new set of restrictions – basically the whole weekend was on a strict curfew from 10pm on Friday until 5am on Monday. Except for tourists (or at least anyone non-resident in Turkey). So, while I could have gone into the office on Saturday, nobody else could, so we did as much as we could in 3 days. On Saturday, I wandered around an empty city of 15 million people. This for example is Istiklal street at 11am on Saturday morning. Everyone familiar with Istiklal will know that it is probably not even this quiet at 4am on a Tuesday, and at 11 on a Saturday? It’s utterly rammed. Think of Oxford Street on a Saturday just before Christmas. And multiply by ten.
https://ibb.co/MpVxdt4]
[/url]I wandered past the Galata Tower, which I’ve never actually been up before and discovered to my surprise that it was open. So, partly because it was cold and raining and partly because I thought it would be as good a time as any to go up it, I got myself a ticket (a new small wrinkle here when I had to produce a “HES Card” which I’d never heard of but turned out to be some form of internal covid-free certificate. But the guy in the ticket office looked up my passport number, and created a QR code of my HES which I then took a photo of (a photo of his phone screen) and then the rest of the day I could use that in the few places where I needed it). It was nice and warm inside, and there are places to sit, which was good. The viewing gallery was a bit of a write-off because it was so cold and wet, but I still did it, before retreating to the warmth and the benches. There were a few tourists around who were doing the same. (As an aside, the majority of tourists I encountered appeared to be Russian, and I learned that last week Erdogan and Putin had a spat over Turkey’s support for Ukraine joining NATO and now all flights between the two countries have been cancelled, so I have no idea how those people are getting home – probably some of them were Ukrainian, as my language skills can’t tell the difference between the two languages, but I’m sure at least some must have been Russian)
(Turkey as North Korea)
https://ibb.co/D9ytDGX]
[/url]Wandered down to the Galata Bridge and across the Golden Horn, where to my surprise one or two of the fish restaurants were open, and I got enticed inside for some actual meze and even a beer. Then wandered up to Sultanahmet, the most touristy district, where it seemed actually most things were open, even carpet and leather shops, which don’t really seem like essentials, but hey. There did turn out to be quite a few tourists around. Nothing like normal obviously, but still more than I imagined.
Anyway, it was a weird, odd, peculiar, cold day to be in Istanbul.
Coming home last night was pretty smooth. Needed to prove I was resident in Romania to board the plane, and on arrival in the “yellow line” (for flights arriving from high Covd case countries – Turkey is currently number 4 in the world behind India, Brazil and somewhere else (the US?)), had to go and talk to a doctor (well I assume she was a doctor, she wore a white coat and a stethoscope), and show my vaccine certificate, and the form I’d filled in and she stamped me “Exceptat” (so I am excepted from quarantine).
A much longer post than i planned. But Tactical Genius has been telling me there is no reason I can't fly to the UK, and it turns out that it's actually pretty easy, so come May, I'll be over to meet up with my family and a few friends hopefully. I guess Thonning is still out of the question, but no matter. Soon.
Comment