Alongside Covid-19
By: Rutger Bezema
Tags: Covid 19, Travel, Digital Nomads, Work Life Balance, Family

Photo by Yohann LIBOT on Unsplash

I am a digital nomad for REWE digital, this week working from Pied-de-Borne (France).

Expect the unexpected.

Three words often recited while traveling, and proven to be true once again. We really didn’t expect a pandemic outbreak while being on the road! And although we’ve been following the outbreak since the beginning of January, we couldn’t have anticipated the effects it was going to have on our journey.

To set things in perspective, we are thankful we don’t have any Covid19 diseased friends or relatives. And although we had the symptoms, we don’t even know if we’ve had the viral-infection ourselves. But the Virus (or rather, the way the virus was handled by governments) had us alter our plans a couple of times.

Being in Indonesia in February, we already started to feel the impact. Hostels normally filled with Chinese tourists were only partially booked or empty. The few Chinese tourists we met were uncertain whether they should return to China. At that time, most western travelers were still optimistic and had little or no concern about their plans yet. But as the virus started to spread worldwide, we decided to minimize the risk and changed our flights to India and Nepal into a flight to Malaysia.

Our last week in Indonesia my wife, daughter, and I got very sick with flew-like symptoms. We refrained from contacting other persons and stayed in a rented apartment for the time. In retrospect, that was the only time this year, I really felt unable to work.

At the end of February, just in time for our flight, our fever broke. We managed to get through the temperature scans in Kuala Lumpur and set foot in Malaysia. As we traveled towards Batu Ferrengi we kept hearing the same story: “There are no tourists, the people are scared and staying at home”. This emptiness, although a little intimidating, gave us a possibility to see local life in Malaysia without swarms of tourists. An effect we would later encounter and appreciate in Sweden as well.

Events took their course. The outbreak with resulting lockdown in Italy changed our minds about traveling towards Thailand. We booked a flight to Germany. Around this time, our friends and colleagues started to ask us how things were and if all was well. Homeoffice still was optional and I was the only remote worker.

On our day of departure, we found out, we had actually booked the last flight out of Malaysia! Our connecting flight was even canceled in Dubai, leaving us for 3 days in this desert city preparing for lockdown. It was the end of March and all of Europe closed their borders except the Netherlands and Sweden. Since we had no place to go, we requested a family-asylum in Groningen with my parents.

From all the places we’d expected to stay, we’d never imagined staying 6 weeks at my parents' home! We had nowhere to travel to and we used this stop for a daily routine: Work, school, long walks with the dog. We had a unique, wonderful, and grateful time as a multi-generation family.

All of a sudden the world had adapted our way of working. Schools ordered home-schooling, everyone worked remotely, and “zoom-/google-” meetings were as normal as meet-ups after work.

But as the weeks passed and Europe was staying in lockdown, we decided to not #stayhome and traveled to Sweden. Fortunately, as one of the last countries in the world, this beautiful sparsely populated country welcomed us openly. The Swedish people kept their “social-distance” and handled the crisis adequate and responsible. We felt free in a locked-down world with no tourists and airplanes.

Finally, June 15th, Europe opens up and we resume our route-to-the-south. We are now in France and are delighted to see that here too the people are responsible and open towards us. We travel through tourist-free villages and stay in places we would under normal circumstances not have been alone in.

Do we have any expectations for the future? No, we have none ;-)

a bientot (see you soon)

Rutger