We May Have Paris

It looks increasingly like Americans vaccinated against COVID - myself included - will be able to travel to Europe as soon as this summer.

Alas, a lot of Americans vaccinated against COVID - myself included - won't be going to Europe in 2021.  Why?  The short answer to why involves time and money - a lot of us lack both.  But there are other reasons, at least as far I as I'm concerned.  I wouldn't know how to prove I've been vaccinated.  I'd still have to follow public-health guidelines not just getting there, but also when I am there; that is, I'd still have to wear a face covering and stay six feet - oh, right, two meters - apart in the Louvre or the Autostadt complex largely because the vaccination rate in the European Union is far below the U.S.  Is that worth it?  I don't go to places I don't have to go to here at home, so why would I want to go through the trouble of even going abroad now?  Following all those public-health guidelines would certainly take the fun out of going abroad, especially using the high-speed rail networks.       

But the big reason for not going this year is, as always, lack of time and money, so maybe the other issues are all just sour grapes.  But it's hard to imagine traveling through the Italian or Irish countryside or enjoying cities like Paris or Berlin when I haven't been able to go on a day trip to rural Pennsylvania or upstate New York because I don't know what's open and what's not.  And even though I live near New York City, I haven't been there since before the pandemic began.  That may be in part - in large part - because there's no rail service between my town and the city and the bus line that used to serve my town has been shut down since August.     

I'm particularly bummed about all this, because I'd been trying for nearly twenty years to visit Europe, and the closest I came was just a few months before SARS CoV-2 escaped China ( a country I have less than zero interest in visiting).  A friend of mine on Facebook, an Englishwoman who lives in Paris, invited me to visit her in her adopted hometown, and I accepted.   Just as I was beginning to plan my trip, in the early summer of 2019, I had a medical emergency that prevented me from going.   I wasn't sure if I could go in 2020, but I kept it on the table . . . until the pandemic shoved it right off. 

As for my ladyfriend, I haven't had contact with her since this past May.  I've tried to call her on her landline phone and leave her messages, but she hasn't responded.  I think she went back to England, but technology does make it possible to check messages on a landline phone from afar.  Attempts to reach her by Facebook haven't been any more successful.  By the time this pandemic is over, she may even forget I exist.

As for going to Europe, I have already decided to wait until 2023 at the earliest, but that may be too optimistic.  I'm increasingly convinced that the only chance I ever had to see Europe, after so many failed attempts to even get past the early planning stage, was if my ancestors hadn't emigrated to America.

P.S.  The opening of travel to Europe will not be an incentive for COVID-vaccine-resistant Americans to get a shot.  The Americans who don't want to get a shot are the same people who, convinced that they live in the greatest country of all human history, don't want to travel elsewhere.