At the moment this song hammers in our heads all the time. And it’s not only from Clash, it’s indeed a real clash and conflict. We really don’t know what to do. On the one hand we can’t wait to go. And the finish of the Vendee Globe Race didn’t make it better. Even if it turned out so incredibly awful for Boris. But we saw the pictures of the Biscay at night, the sea, the waves, Les Sables d’Olonne and the pontoons we walked on one and a half years before. And on the other hand we know how dramatically Covid-19 develops at the moment. Our first flight has been canceled and the other flight, which we found quickly, we can’t take, because it’s impossible to meet the required rules. Nobody can take a flight at 6:30 if all test centers in Hannover don’t open until 9 a.m. and the test has to be done 4 hours before departure. So we currently have no flight. And KLM doesn’t know how this could be solved, neither does the airport, and the test center at the airport promised to think about new opening times. A deadlock which no longer makes it necessary to ban traveling at all.

Without any question, the necessity to ban holiday traveling at the moment isn’t difficult to understand. But we don’t want to travel to and fro. We only want to get back and stay abroad for at least half a year or even longer. But the situation in Portugal is coming to a head. It’s getting worse from day to day. And in Portugal you can track the development, that will probably hit Germany soon as well, unless something magic happens. Last year we returned from a low risk area in Portugal to a high risk area in Germany. And to be honest, we thought about if it would be wise to go for a visit to Germany. And now it’s in the other way around and we think about again. Our hearts are already back on board again, but…

While I’m writing this lines of the blog, the news from Portugal, Spain, France and Germany are coming thick and fast. The Spanish-Portuguese border is closed now, France is likely to close their borders as well -at least for tourists-, the KLM flights are canceled and Germany wants to stop all flight activities at all.

We thought about going by car, but as the Spanish-Portuguese border is closed, this possibility is also no longer an option. The only ray of hope is that the marina assured us that we can stay on our current berth for another month or even for a longer time. And they probably only charge the off-season rate for the lockdown period. Last year in Spain we had to pay the high-season rate, even so the season was everything but high.

So the decision has been made now. We will stay and won’t go. Initially for one month. And then we’ll see what’s possible. Possible and reasonable. Everything for the 14 of February is cancelled now. It hasn’t been easy and for a long time we looked for alternatives, but in the end we did it with a heavy heart.