Whew, what a year this week has been, eh?
This is one of the best summaries of recent events that I've read.
With respect to our trip, I'm not totally pessimistic. It is still 4.5 months away and tourism is such a major factor in our destination countries that they will be very willing to reopen for summer. That said, I guess that the travel situation may stay highly volatile for a time. Especially for our fly-in guests from other continents (
@Misrabelle and you,
@93Flareside) I am really not sure how feasible travelling to Europe will be in July/August (mandatory quarantines?).
In addition to that, the trip as planned includes eight border crossings, not counting getting to the start point in the first place, with only three of them within the Schengen area (but that may not make a difference anyway). Even if the situation improves, and I believe it will, because of the high dynamic of the situation I see the possibility of borders being closed on short notice.
But another very sad aspect is, with the economy going down the toilet, some of us might be in financial hardship due to unemployment or lack of orders that we did not see coming only a short time ago and thus unable to make it.
Did I say I'm not totally pessimistic? Yes, the paragraphs above sound
really pessimistic. But I wanted to get the worst scenarios on the table.
If the trip is possible by then, I'm willing to go through with it (and as a sidenote: I'm leaning towards taking the car).
But I'm very unsure about booking anything right now, especially the large accomodations which are very cheap per person if we are enough, but wouldn't make sense if half the group cancels. When booking something, we should make damn sure it's cancelable without cost.
I totally understand that right now no one can commit to anything, I can't neither. Given the dynamic of the situation, it will hopefully look a lot better once Europe, Australia and the US are over the initial phase of the pandemic in a few weeks, when the initial unchecked infections are over.