My Quarantine Diary - Day 1

It's been a while, so here's a quick update:

We decided to leave Brazil and in the middle of planning and trying to sell our apartment, we were found a match for adoption and have adopted two beautiful girls.  So now we're an Anglo-Brazilian family, but still moving to the UK.  Then along comes the corona virus to make things complicated.  We decided that I would  go first, as arrivals need to quarantine for 14 days, then I can find a house and get everything ready.  So here's my quarantine diary.

Day 0

The day has finally come, after 9 years living abroad, I’m coming back to the UK!  True to form, the year 2020 has taken our carefully laid plans, suspiciously coughed all over them and caused a massive rethink.  Well, not to be beaten, the day has finally arrived, if 3 months too late and I’m in Scotland, isolating in my old bedroom!

 

The flight was ok, but a bit of a surreal affair.  All the airport has social distancing reminders everywhere, and marks on the floor to remind people to stay 2m apart (or 1.5m in Europe), but people don’t seem to pay attention to it.  Boarding the plane still appears like boarding at any other time, with people so eager to get on board that they don’t think how close they are standing.  Interestingly, the Amsterdam to Aberdeen flight was worse for this, no regard for social distancing at all!  For the Sao Paulo to Amsterdam flight, people appeared to be (for the most part) following the separation marks and disembarking row at a time as requested. 

 

The airports were also very strange.  Joinville is tiny, so not much to say about it, but Guarulhos – Sao Paulo’s international airport – was a ghost town!  I’ve seen it so quiet when catching one of the last flights at night, but my flight was at 15:05 on a Friday – it should have been heaving!  Then I boarded and saw a half-empty plane.  I was lucky enough to have a premium economy seat (a big ‘wow’ dripping with sarcasm) and there was hardly anyone in that section; I had the 4 middle seats to myself with an unobstructed view to the window, no one in front to put their seat back and no one behind for me to worry about putting my seat back and limiting their leg space.  Best of all, no queue for the toilets!  The service was a bit limited, but they did their best in the circumstances, straight after dinner, they dropped off a ‘goody bag’ with some chocolate, an apple, a cake, a can of coke and a bottle of water to make up for reduced service during the flight.  It’s not like normal KLM service, but with all the e-mails they sent about reduced service, it was more than I expected!

 

I was surprised that there was no health screening on arrival in Amsterdam – I was expecting at least a temperature check, but there was nothing but a constant reminder to wear a mask, wash your hands and keep your distance.  Thus began my 10-hour layover…

 

If you have 10 hours to kill in Amsterdam, I can heartily recommend catching a train into the city centre and passing the time there.  If you’re not in the middle of a pandemic and travelling from the country with the second worst number of COVID 19 cases and deaths (2.7M cumulative cases, 94,000 deaths) it’s not the best idea, so I tried to make myself comfortable.  Big mistake.  Schiphol – Amsterdam Airport – is one of the better airports I’ve been to and they have a good provision of comfortable seating, including some pleasantly reclined seats.  After an 11-hour flight with limited sleep, it wasn’t long before I found myself dozing, not something I would recommend when you’re on your own with no one else to look after your belongings!  So I got a coffee and spend the rest of my time between sitting, walking, eating, drinking, sitting, walking and sitting a bit more. I love travel, but airports are always a low point.

 

Day 1

Finally, the home straight, the short hop to Aberdeen.  After all that time, I inevitably slept most of the way there.  I put my jacket on to get off the plane, it’s summer, but I can suffer a bit of warmth to make it easier to carry my cases.  Who am I kidding, warmth?  IT was colder than when I left Brazil, a chilly day in winter and this is Scottish summer!  Home sweet home!

 

Again there was no real health screening beyond a couple of hand sanitisers on the walls and reminders to keep your distance.  On arrival in the UK, it’s obligatory to enter your flight details into an online form along with the details of where you will spend your 14 days of quarantine (unless travelling from an exempt country) so I showed my printout and that was that!

 

Although I spent almost all my time since the start of the pandemic in isolation (except for the occasional necessary forays) and despite wearing masks and my hands consuming more alcohol in a day than I drink in a year, I can’t guarantee that I didn’t pick up COVID on my travels, so I assume I am contaminated and am taking every precaution possible.  It has slightly dampened my homecoming, but the last thing I want is to pass this nasty virus on to my parents, so it’s masks and distancing until I know I am not contaminated.  So I sat in the back seat of the car, like a taxi passenger, for the trip to Forres.  I then sat at the other end of the room, wearing a mask to talk to my parents, wiping down everything I touch.  Most of my time will be spent in my old bedroom, or the other bedroom which has been deputised as my home office.  No hugs or anything, no going out and definitely no going to see my Nan.  Two weeks to go…