Chill Crow News
  • Home
  • News

    Trending Tags

      • Business
      • Politics
      • World
    • Entertainment

      An iCarly Reunion Is Occurring So A lot Sooner Than You Thought – E! On-line

      Drake ‘Scary Hours 2’ EP Drops With Three New Songs

      Cynthia Bailey Serves Up Hotness With Her New Blonde Unit

      Kim Kardashian, Jojo Siwa and Extra Stars to Seem at 2021 Nickelodeon Children’ Selection Awards – E! On-line

      Texas White Children FORCE 10 Yr Outdated Black Boy To Drink Urine On TIKTOK! (Graphic)

      Rudy Guiliani Daughter: ‘I Take pleasure in Threesomes . . . Generally w/ Black Males’!!

      Nastia Liukin’s Residence Transformation Will Have You Flipping Out – E! On-line

      Trending Tags

      • Tech

        ET Offers: Over $1,000 Off Dell 2020 Vostro 15 7500 Core i7 Laptop computer, $100 Off Samsung’s New Galaxy S21 5G Smartphone

        Pentagon Might Dump $10 Billion JEDI Program Over Microsoft, Amazon Struggle

        Lastly Conquer the World of Python Programming for Much less Than $40

        99.co appoints former ProperGuru exec as deputy CEO for Indonesia

        Lively Desktop Plus is an open supply program that permits you to pin different applications to the desktop and use video wallpapers

        EU Needs 20 P.c of Semiconductor Manufacturing by 2030

        Microsoft Edge 89 Steady is out

        Trending Tags

        • Covid-19
        • About
        Friday, March 5, 2021
        No Result
        View All Result
        • Home
        • News

          Trending Tags

            • Business
            • Politics
            • World
          • Entertainment

            An iCarly Reunion Is Occurring So A lot Sooner Than You Thought – E! On-line

            Drake ‘Scary Hours 2’ EP Drops With Three New Songs

            Cynthia Bailey Serves Up Hotness With Her New Blonde Unit

            Kim Kardashian, Jojo Siwa and Extra Stars to Seem at 2021 Nickelodeon Children’ Selection Awards – E! On-line

            Texas White Children FORCE 10 Yr Outdated Black Boy To Drink Urine On TIKTOK! (Graphic)

            Rudy Guiliani Daughter: ‘I Take pleasure in Threesomes . . . Generally w/ Black Males’!!

            Nastia Liukin’s Residence Transformation Will Have You Flipping Out – E! On-line

            Trending Tags

            • Tech

              ET Offers: Over $1,000 Off Dell 2020 Vostro 15 7500 Core i7 Laptop computer, $100 Off Samsung’s New Galaxy S21 5G Smartphone

              Pentagon Might Dump $10 Billion JEDI Program Over Microsoft, Amazon Struggle

              Lastly Conquer the World of Python Programming for Much less Than $40

              99.co appoints former ProperGuru exec as deputy CEO for Indonesia

              Lively Desktop Plus is an open supply program that permits you to pin different applications to the desktop and use video wallpapers

              EU Needs 20 P.c of Semiconductor Manufacturing by 2030

              Microsoft Edge 89 Steady is out

              Trending Tags

              • Covid-19
              • About
              No Result
              View All Result
              Chill Crow News
              No Result
              View All Result
              Home Covid-19

              I crossed the world to see my dying Dad – then the pandemic took me on a wild Europe odyssey | World information

              admin by admin
              February 6, 2021
              in Covid-19
              0
              0
              SHARES
              2
              VIEWS
              Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


              On the morning of 1 July last year, while sitting in my apartment in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, I got the phone call I had dreaded since I moved to Australia.

              My dad was dying.

              My sister had just been to visit him in hospital in Jersey and had been told the doctors had discovered an untreatable aneurysm. She said he could live for a few more months, or die within the next couple of days.

              My dad was 82, a former dock worker, and had remained active and relatively healthy. I was so shocked that I couldn’t focus on booking a flight online.

              So I walked straight out of my apartment to the local Flight Centre – surprised to see it was still open. My bosses granted me compassionate leave, and as a New Zealand citizen, I didn’t have to apply for an exemption to leave the country, as Australian citizens have had to do since March.



              Later that night, I was sitting among travellers in full hazmat suits on a sparsely-filled plane bound for Doha, then London, nervous about turning my phone on when we landed to learn news of my father’s condition. Since moving to New Zealand, then Australia, I’d always feared having to grieve on a long flight home.

              I had to sleep a night in terminal 5 at Heathrow, but luckily had arrived a day before the first flight to Jersey since the island’s border reopened.

              A week after Dad entered the hospital, we had a meeting with the hospital medical team and convinced them to let him return home, to the house he had built for us in the 1960s, to die surrounded by his family. It was his dying wish.

              My three sisters and I took turns caring for him. My mother, who was separated from my father but remained friends, was also there. She was the person who made him happy in life.

              I took the night shifts, as I was still on Australian time. I was lucky because he was more talkative at night.

              One night in early August I was reading a poem to him – Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold – when I saw him take his last breath about 10 minutes before midnight. I woke my sister, a midwife, who confirmed it.

              The Doha plan

              After the funeral I quickly started making plans to fly back to Australia. I assumed I would fly directly, and began searching the websites and apps I would use to book a flight before the pandemic.

              By this point I’d heard talk of people being bumped off flights as Australia restricted the number of international arrivals to ease the burden on its hotel quarantine system.

              Café des Officiers, 3 Place de l’École Militaire, 75007 Paris, France. August 20, 2020



              I thought I could be smart and booked a flight to Sydney from Doha, Qatar, where fewer travellers would be trying to board. I thought I could make an adventure of travelling through Europe to Doha for a couple of weeks while working remotely with colleagues in Australia.

              Two weeks after my dad died, I took a ferry from Jersey to St Malo – the closest French port – and then a train to Paris, where I spent a week working from my hotel room.

              I then caught a train to Berlin, where I would again stay for a week, before flying to Istanbul, which was to be my last week before flying to Doha and then on to Sydney.

              This was where the Doha plan began to seem no longer quite so smart. My flight to Australia was cancelled, the first of at least five flights I would book in vain over the next months, among countless more I monitored online that were cancelled before I got the chance to book them.

              I decided to fly to Athens, where I thought I could base myself for a few weeks. I had read that Greece was handling the pandemic reasonably well, and was open for tourism.

              Looking out from Lycabettus Hill in Athens, September 2020



              But this flight was also cancelled, and with the Turkish-Greek border shut due to the pandemic, my only route to Greece was via Bulgaria.

              Acropolis Museum, Athens Greece, September 2020



              I caught a bus to Edirne, on Turkey’s border with Bulgaria, then a bus to Sofia, where I worked from my hotel for about a week – a pattern that was to become all too familiar.

              I then flew to Athens, where bizarrely there were almost no tourists. At the Parthenon and the Acropolis museum, I had the place to myself. I would come back to my hotel room after a day of sightseeing to work, in line with the hours of my Australian colleagues.

              I had treated the three-week journey from Jersey to Istanbul as a working holiday and had been staying in some fairly nice hotels, thinking I would soon be home. But as it became clear I might be unable to get back to Australia for months. I started booking cheaper and cheaper accommodation.

              Where do you go when you can’t go home?

              By now it was late October, prices for one-way flights to Sydney were more than $10,000, and it was clear economy passengers were still being bumped off their flights. I was looking at routes via Kuala Lumpur, Doha, San Francisco, anywhere – nothing was available.

              It was at this point I realised I didn’t need to stay in Athens. I decided to continue moving across countries I could get into, working in a different city a week at a time.

              I travelled to the port city of Patra for two weeks, then on to Corfu for another two, thinking I could catch a ferry to Italy and try for a flight from Rome. But the ferries never ran due to the pandemic.

              As airfares to Australia soared, the cost of accommodation in smaller European cities plummeted. I was able to stay in hotels for about $200 a week.

              Eating lunch one day in Corfu, I told a waiter I’d be back for dinner the next night. He said I had better come back that night instead, as the lockdown began the next day.

              A view of Kotor in Montenegro taken during the pandemic in November 2020



              This was the first I had heard of it, as I didn’t speak Greek and they were announced with little notice.

              Corfu was just across from Albania, so I quickly packed my things and caught a ferry to the Greek mainland, then crossed into Albania before the lockdown began.

              I was dodging and weaving through lockdowns and border closures, desperate to be in a position where, if a flight home presented itself, I could get on it. I felt like Leonardo di Caprio in Catch Me If You Can.

              After a week in Tirana I moved on to Montenegro, and was starting to question where home was. We would sell our childhood home after my Dad’s death, while the Australian government was effectively barring me and thousands of others from getting home.

              Ulcinj, Montenegro



              Where do you go when you can’t go home?

              In Montenegro, I’d move from town to town by taxi each week. I’d developed a routine, with very odd hours. I’d get up at 5am, work for a few hours, then do some sightseeing and have a long lunch – as many regional towns had curfews from 8pm. I’d then work late into the evening, to line up with my colleagues in Australia.

              Crossing into Croatia, I had a week in Dubrovnik, then one more in Split. By now, in mid-December, I had booked another flight to Sydney. Leaving London on New Year’s Eve, I figured, I might have a better chance of not being bumped. Who would want to fly on New Year’s Eve?

              Arriving in Zagreb, I booked into a fancy hotel as a treat for Christmas and Boxing Day. But days later I was in a shoddy Airbnb when a 6.4 magnitude earthquake rocked the city. I was ready to go home.

              On 30 December, with my flight from London to Sydney still scheduled, I boarded a flight from Zagreb to London, with stops in Warsaw and Paris. There was one last glitch when Polish authorities said I wasn’t permitted to be in the country, forcing me to book a new flight to London.

              The five month journey back to Australia



              Right until the moment I got on my Sydney-bound flight in London, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen.

              I was waiting for the moment of lift, when I was sure the whole plane would erupt in cheers. It didn’t – the cabin was almost empty – but I felt a massive sense of relief.

              Quarantine in Sydney was about as fun as you would expect, but being released two weeks later was magical.

              On a sunny day in mid-January I returned to my Balmain apartment. It was like a time capsule, with post-it notes for upcoming events strewn over my desk, and the calendar still set to June.

              • Andy Ball works as a developer for Guardian Australia. He was speaking to reporter Elias Visontay

              Previous Post

              ‘Clear air, a tremendous home’: pandemic tree-changers seize a slice of the Apple Isle | Housing

              Next Post

              Simply how efficient is the Oxford coronavirus vaccine for the over-65s? | Vaccines and immunisation

              Next Post

              Simply how efficient is the Oxford coronavirus vaccine for the over-65s? | Vaccines and immunisation

              Leave a Reply Cancel reply

              Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

              Al Qaeda’s chief in Yemen beneath arrest, UN report reveals

              Al Qaeda’s chief in Yemen beneath arrest, UN report reveals

              February 4, 2021

              Southeast Asia’s golden age: Resilience and restoration

              February 1, 2021

              Coronavirus reside information: international weekly circumstances lowest since October; Biden to pledge $4bn to Covax scheme | World information

              February 19, 2021
              400m km inside 163 days, China’s Mars probe heads for pink planet

              400m km inside 163 days, China’s Mars probe heads for pink planet

              January 3, 2021

              The Guardian view on meals parcels: cease these starvation video games | College meals

              January 12, 2021

              Lloyds earnings plunge after £4.2bn put apart for Covid defaults | Lloyds Banking Group

              February 24, 2021

              Most non-food pubs in England nonetheless awaiting £1,000 Covid grants | Enterprise

              January 19, 2021

              World report: South Africa bans alcohol gross sales; Spain units up Covid vaccine register | Coronavirus

              December 29, 2020

              Care houses failed by lack of PPE throughout UK Covid first wave, say MPs | Care staff

              February 10, 2021

              Nigerian schoolboys freed as forces seek for 300 kidnapped women

              February 28, 2021

              Standard Transgender ‘Rolling Ray’s Wig Catches On Fireplace: BADLY BURNED!! (Video)

              January 14, 2021

              Wings Over Scotland | By way of the steady door

              February 22, 2021

              Samsung Might Construct $10B Foundry in Austin, Texas

              January 22, 2021

              Large energy outage in Pakistan

              January 9, 2021

              Honduras makes abortion practically inconceivable to legalize

              January 31, 2021

              Emerge! Kicks Off New York Trend Week Highlighting Black Designers

              February 17, 2021
              Chill Crow News

              We bring you the best Premium WordPress Themes that perfect for news, magazine, personal blog, etc. Check our landing page for details.

              Categories

              • Business
              • Covid-19
              • Entertainment
              • Politics
              • Tech
              • World

              Recent News

              Virgin Galactic Chairman Sells $213 Million Stake

              March 5, 2021
              Pope Francis Iraq Go to: Pope arrives in Iraq to rally Christians regardless of pandemic | World Information

              Pope Francis Iraq Go to: Pope arrives in Iraq to rally Christians regardless of pandemic | World Information

              March 5, 2021

              © 2020 Chill Crow News - All rights reserved by Chill Crow News.

              No Result
              View All Result
              • Home
              • Entertainment
                • Sports
              • News
                • Politics
                • World
              • Tech

              © 2020 Chill Crow News - All rights reserved by Chill Crow News.