Flying to Italy in the Pandemic Era
The pandemic has changed the fabric of time, don’t you think? Days loiter along, but wasn’t last week a decade ago? So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when the weeks leading up to our Italy departure switched from creeping like blackstrap molasses to skipping like a stone across a clattering creek. And still I kept hope at bay. Every time Gabe said, “Can you believe we’ll be in Spello next week?” I’d hold out my hand to forestall him.
“Honey.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he’d answer. Familiar to the point of annoyance with my refrain, “If, not when…if.”
Hope, it turns out, is more elastic in the young. My own optimism has turned quite brittle as I contented myself with moving one obstacle aside, and then another. I derived satisfaction from clearing a path rather than a vision of the destination. Still, at the end of a long day of packing and cleaning, when I lacked the will power to push down my dreams, memories of the sounds of Spello lulled me to sleep—cooing doves, a three-wheeled Ape in the distance, night-time greetings ringing off stone walls.
The whole trip to New York City to move Nicolas into his new apartment with his girlfriend Julia helped distract us from what lay at the other end of the journey. The most looming obstacle of all, getting me on the airplane at JFK.
Yes, we knew that I had every legal right to enter Italy. The decreto is quite clear— Americans are indeed banned from travel to Italy, but there are exceptions, and being a EU citizen, or the spouse of an EU citizen is one of those exceptions (see the decreto here, I found it far more helpful than alarmist news stories; lesson learned, consult primary sources for information). Still, we’ve heard so many stories of spouses of EU citizens being denied boarding their airplane. We’d asked American Airlines (who we initially planned on flying) and the response had been, “It’s your responsibility to know the regulations governing legal entrance into other countries.” Not helpful, considering I’ve heard of people bringing copies of the decreto and still being denied, even though the decreto is actual literal proof of eligibility to get on that airplane.
Confusing, until I realized that airline personnel can’t be expected to understand the vagaries of immigration codes for all countries, and thus are probably pretty susceptible to headlines like, “American barred from the EU!” Not all agents will have the patience and tenacity to willingly read proffered documents, even if the relevant details are highlighted.
I figured that we had some aces in our hand for this cross-Atlantic gamble:
We were flying Alitalia, rather than an American airline. I reasoned that employees of an Italian-based travel company might be a bit more nuanced in their understanding of their country’s decrees. It certainly seemed that the bulk of the stories I’d heard about EU-spouses being denied boarding happened with US-based airlines. The tales I’d heard about people being denied boarding on Alitalia mostly starred travelers who didn’t understand the exemptions to the travel ban, rather than people in my situation.
I was traveling with my husband and children who have citizenship. I read one story of a man denied boarding Alitalia, despite having the very same paperwork we’d planned on carrying. It chilled my nerve endings, until I read more closely and realized he’d been traveling on his own. Which meant he’d have to prove that his spouse was an EU-citizen. My EU-citizen-spouse would be the one handing over our family passports. That had to make things easier.
I had a registered lease which would indicate the move towards residency. This might not help, but it had the potential of being useful to prove I wasn’t a tourist but someone working on residency (which I’ll begin as soon as I’m free from quarantine).
So all that was in our favor. Not in our favor was that the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the site that airlines use to determine who is eligible to fly to specific destinations, did not state that spouses of EU citizens were allowed entrance to Italy, even though the decreto clearly said so.
Keith also worried that not having our marriage certificate translated into Italian or our not having proof that our marriage is registered in Spello could be obstacles. At least, he breathed, trying to sound confident, the name on our marriage certificate exactly matched the name on my passport, which includes my maiden name. Not something you’d think about unless you have to prove who you are.
We’d hoped that the embassy would be willing to print us a letter stipulating that I was good to go, but other than reminding us that our marriage was registered in Spello, we heard nothing but crickets from the embassy.
Saying goodbye to Cville before heading onto NYC
The morning of our departure, Keith checked the IATA site one more time and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Finally, finally, the site specified that the ban did not pertain to spouses of nationals of Italy (and other EU countries). This loosened our shoulders a little, though the drive to the airport found them creeping back up. Then again, we’d just said goodbye to our son, after five bonus months of having him home when his college senior year got truncated thanks to the pandemic. We hope to see him and Julia in December, and, if the pandemic gets under control enough to allow more travel in the spring, maybe Japan for her spring break…but who knows? If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we can count on nothing. I can’t imagine not seeing him for a year.
So we drove away from his Orchard Street apartment with heavy hearts. Bereaved to leave, and unsure of what lay beyond this taxi ride. The lashing rain didn’t help.
At JFK, we unloaded our suitcases (our four carry-ons plus 3 other suitcases, more than we’d originally planned for a year abroad, but once you decide you can carry more, it turns out you do) and gathered our resolve for the battle ahead.
We stopped short as the automatic doors sealed us into JFK. Empty. The airport…no bustle, no crowds. Just a straggling handful of masked travelers clustered around the point man in front of the Alitalia counter. We gathered behind a family talking to the Alitalia agent, our eyes darting around the echoing space. The Alitalia agent wrapped up the family ahead of us and may have smiled in a comforting way, but as you know, those masks obscure comforting expressions. He did express delight that Keith had already filled out the required autodichiarazione giustificativa that the decreto specified must be completed (if you are traveling, hit the link to the decreto, the link to the paperwork is right at the top). He said we would need an additional copy to present in Rome and so pointed us to the table behind him where we’d find a stack of copies. He then took our temperatures and wrote the number on each of our forms. Keith filled out the paperwork and we got in “line” (is it a line if there are no people?).
Called forward, I tried to assess the friendliness of the agent by her posture and eye contact, since I couldn’t judge the set of her mouth. I couldn’t tell without cues, but she didn’t seem the helpful sort and I girded myself for an argument. She asked for the passports and the paperwork and seeing that my declaration specified that I was entering as a spouse of an EU citizen, she demanded our marriage certificate as if issuing a challenge. We handed it over and she accepted it without comment. I began to sway from holding my breath. She looked up and ordered us to start loading luggage onto the belt and that’s the first moment I believed we did it. She pushed our passports and marriage certificate back to us and turned to call the next people in “line”.
We tried walking away casually so nobody would interpret our shock as a sign that we’d hoodwinked anyone, but our legs were so weak, we wound up walking in circles, not even able to speak in complete sentences. We literally got lost on our way to the clearly marked “to all gates” sign directly beyond the Alitalia counter.
Twice.
Though that could also be because the security line was disguised as an amusement park in the dead of winter. Miles of railings and not one person.
Which was good since our fogged-over brains needed more attention than passengers usually require. We’d been so surprised and so intent on masking that surprise when the counter agent asked for our bags, we’d handed over Siena’s carryon rather than Keith’s check-in. Which meant she had no toothbrush for the plane and he had to root through his duffel bag to trash all the shaving cream he’d recently ordered and that inconveniently far surpassed the liquid limitations.
The security agent had to tell us multiple times how to proceed with our luggage, as if this were our first time flying. Do we take off our shoes? What do we do with our phones? How about our keys? Wait. We have no keys. We have no keys because someone else is living in our house now. That’s weird. But the security guard doesn’t care about that. How about our socks, can we leave those on? Yes, of course we can leave those on. Can I bring snacks? Is deodorant a liquid or a solid?
The guy was either extremely patient or I’m choosing to remember him that way. Also, part of this is not on us, it’s really hard to make out words from across the scanning corridor, so I don’t think the agents on the other side really need to mock my stepping forward and back about three times because I couldn’t tell if they were giving me the go-ahead or not. My stuttering step, I realized, was emblematic of the entire last five months.
I paused too long considering that, my arms above my head and my legs straddled onto the yellow footprints. I totally missed the agent telling me my foot was in the wrong place. That also felt like a metaphor, but now I knew too much to give into pondering.
Instead I hustled to the belt to gather our things, grateful that not one traveler had borne witness to our chaotic display.
The terminal only seemed to have this one Alitalia flight that afternoon. Or maybe that whole day. There were only a handful of people waiting at the gate for a flight that had to seat several hundred. Then again, we’d arrived several hours before our flight was scheduled to depart, to give ourselves time to negotiate with truculent airline personnel.
By the time we boarded, perhaps a hundred people waited. All speaking Italian. Everyone masked and everyone keeping to the distance indicated on the seats and on the floor.
Boarding proceeded without incident. Like Delta (that we’d originally booked a flight with, but that one cancelled two weeks before), Alitalia leaves the middle two seats empty for social distancing purposes. Or perhaps that’s because this Alitalia flight is codeshared with Delta, I’m unclear on that. In any case, we’d booked the outer edges of 2 4-person rows, thinking we could sit in the middle and create more space between ourselves and the passengers across the aisles. The space and the added buffer made up for the lack of windows to lean against.
So what’s flying like in the age of COVID19? Well, when we boarded, Alitalia said that their service had changed so to please not assume what we experienced was indicative of their normal customer care. This was an accurate statement.
They served food, unlike some airlines. But the meal was meager and there were no choices, not for food selection and not for beverages. The flight attendants whipped up the aisle as if pursued by a monster (which, I suppose they sort of are… even with everyone masked, and everyone was, all the time unless they were eating or drinking, and even though we now know that the air on an airplane is circulated every few minutes through hospital grade filters, still, it must be hard to always be in contact with people in a flying tin can), tossing out trays of food. I’m not sure why the food itself would suffer, maybe the factories making them are also operating at reduced capacity, but this was not what I expect from Alitalia. A few ravioli so bad Gabe and I couldn’t eat them, a pack of crackers, a slice of cheddar, and a tub of what was probably intended to be called “tiramisu” but resembled chocolate yogurt topped with cocoa crispies. Plus, a small bottle of water.
After dinner, the lights were shut off as if we were noisy children whose irritable parents just wanted us to go to sleep already. Keith and I complied, or at least tried to. Gabe and Siena fidgeted with their TV’s only to discover they were broken and played no movies or TV shows. Luckily Siena had loaded up her iPad with shows before leaving and luckily Tetris worked on one of the TV’s in their row of four so Gabe set out to beat the machine. By the time the lights went on, about an hour and a half from Rome, he had little blocks circling his pupils.
Breakfast time and the flight attendants sailed down the aisles again, this time tossing out bottles of water and a packaged marble cake which was surprisingly tasty. No coffee (on Alitalia) and no juice.
Please note, I’m not complaining about any of this. I understand these are strange and difficult times, so not even for one minute did I grumble or feel resentful. On the contrary, I felt nothing but blessed for that hard seat and those masked hours and those bad ravioli (though I did feel grateful that I’d thought to bring the other half of the Cuban sandwich I’d had for lunch). But I know many of you want details about what flying is like in the corona-age, so I wanted you to be able to picture it. Now, it could change next week or be totally different on a different airline, so don’t hold me to this, but it should show you that what we once took for granted is actually fungible.
To add to that, I’ll tell you that I’d completely forgotten to bring the Clorox wipes I’d planned (so put those on your list; we had to douse everything with our spray hand sanitizer) but I did remember to lodge the packaged blankets in the overhead so we wouldn’t be tempted to use them. Luckily we were all wearing sweaters anyway to cut down on luggage space. Yes, it looks like the virus isn’t terribly communicable via surfaces after all, but it costs nothing to be careful.
We landed and the pilot asked that rather than congregating in the aisles, we waited until the row ahead of us cleared before gathering our suitcases. I thought this was a great idea to keep contact down, though some people decided the rules didn’t apply to them so used the sparsely filled aisle to barrel for the exit.
Exiting the plane, we followed the corridors and were stopped at a temperature check, though we didn’t register it as one. Two men sat on folding chairs, their eyes glued to a screen hanging from the ceiling. They stopped us and asked Gabe to take off his hat before they tested his forehead. We realized that those screens must be showing our body temperature, but Gabe’s hat obscured his reading. He had started feeling motion sick at the end of the flight (who wouldn’t after six hours of Tetris?) so I worried that it might have raised his temperature, but they nodded and sent us off.
Next stop, passport control. We’d been excited to use the EU line for the first time (the last time we went to Italy, the first since them getting Italian passports, we had assumed they’d have to use their American passports to stick with me; we only recently found out that families of mixed passports can use the EU line), but all the lines specified, “All passports”. Which I guess they could do since there were so few people. I wanted to take a photo for you, but I’ve been reprimanded before about taking a photo in the passport control line and as you can imagine I was taking no chances.
We couldn’t approach the plexiglass together, only one at a time. So Keith went first and handed the agent his passport and that paperwork we’d filled out in New York, which declared our eligibility for entering Italy and our agreement to isolate on arrival. He stepped away and I held my breath and took his place. Ready for a line of questioning a la the movie Green Card or at least a look of withering scorn. Instead he merely asked me to remove my mask so he could see my face before stamping my passport. He pushed it back to me and waved me away.
I guess that’s it?
Never has a tired hand flick felt more like a ticker-tape parade.
Gabe and Siena followed us in quick succession. We walked through to baggage claim and discovered our bags just turning the corner. We whisked them off the belt and strolled out into the crisp Rome morning.
Rome.
Just like that, we were in Rome.
The whole transaction from the plane was so fast, we beat our driver to the curb. Which reminds me, part of the quarantine demands that you not take public transportation to your residence of self-isolation. You have to rent a car (which we didn’t want to do, since it would be sitting for two weeks racking up daily fees without our being able to use it) or hire a driver. If you are coming this way, let me know and I can give you Alessandro’s information, he was great and his van was huge.
I fell asleep before the van nosed its way onto the highway, waking once in awhile to sunflower fields and lines of cypresses, as if opening the door into a dream. A squeeze of my knee woke me and I opened my eyes to see Keith grinning. He cocked his head to his window, and my sleep-stained eyes widened.
Spello.
Shining pink in the late morning sunshine.
We had found our way home.