A Journal of the Plague Year (novel by Daniel Defoe)
This has been a difficult post to write. I normally start preparing each Friday morning’s blog post two to three weeks in advance. I was due to depart on the first trip of my Europe Explored project this Sunday, 22 March 2020. However, due to the rapidly changing situation regarding the spread of Covid-19 in Europe, when I started writing this post I did not know whether, or where, I would be going. Of course, by now I know that I am going nowhere.
This first trip of Europe Explored was planned (and largely booked) in November 2019. This was before the idea of Europe Explored was formulated. So rather than fitting into my larger scale plans for systematically exploring the continent, this journey was planned to visit nine European cities that I had never properly been to before, over the course of 12 days.
The route was going to be:
London – Dijon – Basel – Zurich – Innsbruck – Verona – Trieste – Ljubljana – Bled – Regensburg – London.
It is startling how rapidly this crisis has escalated – just over two weeks ago I thought that the whole trip might still have been possible, then I thought I may have to skip Verona, then both Verona and Trieste became off limits. But as at that stage Slovenia was virtually unscathed by the virus outbreak, I planned re-routing to pick up my existing bookings in Slovenia. Obviously, now with virtually the whole continent in lockdown it is not possible to travel anywhere.
Compared to the human tragedy that is now unfolding, worrying about whether or how I can reclaim the nearly £1,000 that I had paid out in normally non-refundable advance train tickets and hotel bookings is the least of my concerns. Suffice to say that some companies have been admirable, whereas others have behaved despicably. I won’t name them now, but I may do so later once the full picture has emerged.
It now looks almost certain that Trips 2 & 3 of Europe Explored, already booked for May and June/July won’t be happening either.
It is not clear when freedom to travel round Europe will be restored and, when it is, how much Europe will have changed. It’s impossible at this stage to think about planning future explorations.
I had planned the blog posts over the next few months to largely feature reports from my current travels. As this will not now be possible for the foreseeable future, with great reluctance, for the time being posts will now appear only on the last Friday of each month.
Stay safe.
Europe Explored 