Travel in the time of Covid

When we moved our family overseas 11 years ago, we decided on a policy of going to visit our families and friends in the US every other summer. And it has worked wonderfully - it makes the (expensive and long) trip special and long-awaited, never taken for granted. In the off years, we sometimes get visitors and that helps shore us up until the next time we make the trek to the United States.

Some of those visitors were supposed to come see us last summer, which obviously didn’t happen. That means that if we make it to the US this summer, it will have been fully two years since we have seen any of our family members. It’s not too terrible for us grown-ups, but kids (and their cousins) change a lot in two years! We have been agonizing over whether to try to travel to the US this summer. On top of all the usual hassle and expense of this trip in any other year, there’s all the inconvenience and uncertainty of travel in the time of Covid:

Get covid tests within 72 hours of our departing flight, making sure to get the results before boarding.

Quarantine in the US for 7 days upon arrival.

Get vaccinated!!!!!!!!

Then, for the return trip, get covid tests again, which I assume costs money in the US.

Get tested upon arrival in Finland, quarantine for 72 hours, get tested again, get released from quarantine if negative. Hopefully all in time for the kids to start school in August.

On paper, it seems like it will all be a giant pain in the neck but it should work. However, I can’t help but think of the summer of 2013 when I was 7+ months pregnant and I did all my medical paperwork correctly and still was denied boarding on my flight back home to the UAE. It should have worked, but it didn’t (until it did, at the last moment).

Can we take a flight on a Tuesday? Because what if tests aren’t available on a weekend, or results are slow to come over a weekend? Can we get vaccinated within those first 7 days in the US when we’re quarantining? Can we rent a car from an airport counter - like the quarantine only starts when we leave the airport or…? What if the airline cancels our flight? What if the rules change while we’re away from Finland?

In a normal year, we would have bought our tickets months ago and would now be happily looking forward to our trip. But here we are, still agonizing over all this. Over the past few months, I have decided - several times, actually - to just not bother traveling to the US this summer. And then I’ve thought: THREE years. Three years! That is a long time for cousins to not play together and for grandparents to not be able to hug their grandkids. And throw what seems to be our best chance at getting vaccinated anytime soon into the bargain and it seems like it’s worth trying. But we’ll see.