Chapter Twenty-Five: Fly to Brussels, to London, to New York
If you're not an experienced traveller, don't
12.21.2021 - 12.21.2021 32 °F
View Morocco + Uganda + Rwanda on paulej4's travel map.
With me in seat 2F, Brussels Airways flight 467 left last night at 9:10pm Central Africa Time from Kigali, Rwanda, stopped in Entebbe, Uganda, and then flew onward to Brussels, Belgium, where son Cianán Russell and I have a very contemporary date. We are meeting for coffee and COVID tests.
I was supposed to have the entire day with Cianán but British Airways canceled my later flight to London, forcing me onto an earlier flight from Brussels and robbing me of precious time with my son. I have only five hours in Brussels instead of twelve. Since Cianán is flying to Chicago late tomorrow morning, this isn't as big a disappointment as it otherwise would have been. It is probably even better for him, frankly, as he has last-minute preparations to make before his holiday season back to family in the United States.
Those five hours include important coffee and vital COVID-19 negative results. Without them, I will not be allowed back into the U.S.A. Cianán discovered the opportunity I needed.
The EcoCare Center at the Brussels Airport offers rapid results COVID PCR testing and through his insight, I was able to secure (and pre-pay 135 Euro for) a test appointment to be conducted between 7:30 and 7:45am. Cianán has his appointment for the same time.
The only difficulty with this plan is that the EcoCare Center is outside security at BRU. That means I must clear customs and immigration and then find the site within the expected and allotted thirty minute time frame. Afterward, I must check in for my onward international flight, clear security, etc. Five hours in a normal life seems like a lot of time. But mine, if you have been following along, is a life that fails to approach normality.
In an interesting twist, however, Brussels Airlines got me to BRU 45 minutes early. As I was in business class, I was among the first to exit the aircraft and was the first to clear immigration. It was easy to find the COVID test site in the cold pre-dawn darkness and there was no line. As I had completed my appointment and payment online in advance, I cruised through and I had completed my test by 6:45am. They promise me an email result within "two to three hours."
Also of note, I have not as yet received the test result from the test taken last evening in Kigali. It should arrive VERY SOON as it is now after 8:00am there. On their site the connection is taking painfully long to load; perhaps because everyone is awaiting that 8:00am test result publication time, perhaps not. In any event, when it finally connects at 7:30 Brussels time, 8:30 Rwanda time, the result is not yet posted. This is reminiscent of trying to buy concert tickets online. Click--nothing. Click--nothing. Click--nothing. We keep clicking because we need, we want, we expect something to finally happen. The internet may be the only place where Einstein was wrong: insanity isn't doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
In any event, I now have two COVID-19 test results in the wind. One of them must be received by me within the next three hours or I am in a pickle.
My heart skips a beat: it is Cianán, flesh and blood, right in front of me. There are COVID-be-damned hugs all around.
It's the Russells in Brussels, twins we are. When I look at his red hair, it is the same as I imagine mine still is. As we sip coffee, my negative test results from the test just taken here at BRU come in. However, there is no QR code, just a document. That means I cannot use the VeriFly app. Still nothing from Rwanda on that test.
At exactly three hours before flight time we present me at the BA checkin position. There are many people but no airline personnel. More and more people come, no airline personnel do. At 2.5 hours to flight time, three airline folks arrive. It takes them a few minutes to prepare and then they begin checking people in. I am fourth in line, then third, then next and then she checks me in. She accepts the non-QR code form on my phone. She accepts my U.S. vaccination certificate. She inquires about my U.S. passenger attestation form. I know nothing of that. "Fill it in at the lounge."
I am successfully checked in for British Airways 391 flight departing at 11:50am Central European TIme to London Heathrow arriving at 11:50am Greenwich Mean Time; a one hour flight with a one hour time zone change. I am in transit at Heathrow so there are none of the customs or immigration formalities; it's just a connection--even in the time of COVID. The subheading for this chapter is WCPHLO which is my BA flight designator. What Could Possibly Happen Laying Over? BA flight 115 leaves Heathrow at 2:15pm for its almost eight hour flight to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, New York, U.S.A.
At the lounge, I find a PDF of the U.S. Passenger Attestation Form but can find no way to complete it online, including through the BA app where it should, it seems to me, rightfully be. I email the PDF to the nice front desk person at the lounge and she prints it out for me. It is seven pages long. I complete it--on paper--and insert it into the section of one of my backpacks that is used exclusively to house mandatory or "might be" mandatory documents.
At this point, many people I fear would have broken down in tears and said to the nearest official, "Please just shoot me."
I desperately try to find an electrical outlet to give a bit of a charging boost to my phone, watch and computer. I have fifteen minutes to relax. Had things gone smoothly, this sentence would have read, "I have two hours to relax." I make haste to my boarding gate and see that BA391 is on time. Boarding is smooth. Before I know it we are wheels down at Heathrow. Long walks and x-ray machines, escalators and the pulsating signage that is the London Heathrow Airport Shopping Mall are an attack on both the body and the mind. But, I know my around this airport and am quickly ensconced at the business class lounge where, I once again, top of my electronics in preparation for my upcoming almost eight-hour flight over the Atlantic to New York's JFK.
At 5:25pm, about eight hours from now, I am supposed to be wheels down in my home country, having left it 26 days ago for Morocco, France (unintentionally), Dubai, Uganda, Rwanda, Belgium and the U.K. Had a country not sealed its borders, I would have also set foot in Nigeria and Israel or Turkey and Ethiopia. But, as you know, all those flights canceled as it was setback upon setback. Now behind me, I look ahead.
The JFK Courtyard by Marriott sent me a nice email telling me that I was eligible for an upgrade to my overnight accommodation but that, alas, no such upgrade was available. They said both of those things in the same email. Why would someone send an email saying "you're eligible for this but you can't have it"? That's like me holding a banana in front of one of my gorilla friends and then snatching it back when they came to claim it. Well, not exactly like that, I suppose.
There will be but one more chapter to this saga and it will be published tomorrow. I'll let you know if I did make it to JFK and whether or not the Courtyard unexpectedly satisfied the anticipation they created and quickly withdrew. Either way, know this: I am anxious, no, obsessed with the idea of being home. I long for hugs from B4, for a cheeseburger at Casey's in Vero, for another hug from B4. I have a hug for Cookie who lost Bill while I was gone. I want to share a meal with Chuck & JoAnn in Vero. I want to drive my car. I have access to Netflix and Amazon Prime, to get the mail, to have my morning coffee--the type I am used to.
They are closing the doors on this 777 now. I am very close.
