Covid Catastrophe in the Czech Republic

On Thursday, March 12 of 2020, I left Marseille for Prague.

Beautiful, colorful, historic, city-of-a-thousand spires. But, hindsight is always 20/20.

When I landed around 9pm, only the passengers of my flight (all twelve of us) stuttered through the wide, empty corridors of the airport. When we reached the main terminal, a woman wearing gloves stood with a handful of fliers. She handed them out to us–fliers about COVID-19. About how to wash our hands.

Friday, March 13

The sun is out, though the wind is blowing. It’s not exactly warm (like the south of France), but it’s spring break and I’m in a beautiful, jaw dropping city with a friend I haven’t seen in months.

Georgena and I hoped on the bus near our AirBnB and journeyed to the Old Town of Prague. We wandered through the winding narrow streets, beneath the arches, clattering down the cobblestones. It seemed like every building had a fresh coat of paint. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with Prague. It has that magical European feel of not being part of a sprawling metropolis. When you’re in the old town, it feels like merely a small town, because the old buildings (and the old sentiments) have been so well preserved from the metal and steel expansion of the United States.

Additionally, it was two months into my study abroad adventure. The previous weekend, I’d trekked around Paris all by myself. It didn’t matter that I didn’t speak Czech. It didn’t matter that I’d never been to the Czech Republic before. I felt like I belonged. Belonged to Europe. I’d been a student, a resident, a tourist in so many places in the last 2 months. I’d had conversations in French. I’d translated a hundred signs using Google Translate. I’d ordered food that I couldn’t pronounce. I’d I knew exactly what to say, how to act to fit in. I was confident.

I was having the best two months of my life.

I was also doing so cheaply, so the first activity Georgena and I planned was joining a free walking tour. The meeting point was the square by the famous Tyn Church. When we walked up to our tour guide (who had a sign saying “Free Walking Tours” tucked under his arm like he didn’t actually want people to see it), he urged us over, asked our names, then asked us to stand about ten yards away. “We can’t gather in groups larger than fifteen people.”

Georgena and I glanced at each other. What weirdness was this?

When the tour started ten minutes later, the man giving our tour divided us in half and sent one group with another tour guide. And, finally, he explained.

The night before (while I was flying to the city), Prague had declared a state of emergency due to coronavirus. As a result, gatherings of more than 15 people were prohibited, all tourist destinations (museums, churches, theaters, etc) were closed, and restaurants had to close by 8pm. Our guide shouted over the wind (since he didn’t want us standing too close to him) that if the number of infected people continued to rise, the whole city might possibly shut down.

But we were here. Our flights back to Marseille and Riga, Latvia weren’t until Tuesday. We had five days to enjoy Prague–but we couldn’t do any of the activities we’d planned. But, we forged ahead.

Saturday, March 14

Fortunately, there are plenty of outside things to see in Prague.

We strolled the Old Town Bridge Tower located on the Old Town side of Charles Bridge. The tower was built along with Charles Bridge in the 14th century. Prague’s King Charles ruled during the 14th century. He was the king of Bohemia and of Germany. He created the first University in Central Europe (surprise, surprise, he named it Charles University).

In 1355, Charles became the the Holy Roman Emperor. During this time, Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.

Next, we went to Lennon Wall. An image of John Lennon was originally painted on the wall in 1980. The wall quickly became a spot for political messages.

Saturday night for dinner (since all the restaurants were closed) we had a Czech meal delivered to our Airbnb: smažený sýr (fried cheese) and svíčková na smetaně (beef with cream sauce).

Though Prague had delicious food and beautiful buildings, the coronavirus restrictions and closures were making us worried. I got a notice that evening that President Macron of France was closing all the schools in France for one month. He was also closing all non-essential business, just like in Prague. This meant no restaurants, no churches, no museums. People aren’t even supposed to be on the street unless they are doing something essential, like buying groceries.

There was a mass exodus at my study abroad institute. Half the students were on their way home, and the other half were planning their exit. Suddenly our bravado–our “the world’s chaos can’t mess with our spring break” was disappearing in globs down the drain. Now the world’s chaos was not only messing with our spring break, but with our entire semester abroad. We spent that night scrolling from page to page, refreshing screens and email inboxes as each minute another disaster seemed to pop up on our screen. But the news was conflicting. My school emailed me telling me I could come home if I wanted, but that it wasn’t required. Then a few hours later, suddenly if I wanted to stay in Europe I had to sign a waiver saying I was going against the explicit advice of the university.

And Georgena and I weren’t even in our study abroad countries–we were still in Prague!

So, that night, we switched our flights back to Marseille and Riga from Tuesday to Sunday. We were cutting out spring break short, but we were still smiling through the rising anxiety because at least we had made the most of Prague.

Alas, our confidence was about to suffer death by a thousand cuts.

Fleeing Europe

I can’t say that Georgena and I didn’t know any better. After all, we had decided Thursday night, before everything had gone to crap, that we weren’t going to post anything on social media about being Prague. Both of our study abroad programs had not outright forbidden leaving our respective study abroad countries, but they were pretty adamant that we should not. We didn’t want to get in trouble.

But we thought we were untouchable. We thought the chaos wending it’s way through the world was ridiculous. There was no precedent for everything shutting down. Surely in a week or two everything would be back to normal. Do you remember when we all thought that?

My alarm went off at 5 am on Sunday morning and I remember chatting with Georgena as she packed her bags. She had a 6 am train to catch to Berlin, then a flight to Riga. I remember waving at her from the AirBnB door as she limped down the steep steps. Then I laid back down in bed and read a book. My flight wasn’t until 1pm.

Half an hour later, I get a call from Georgena. She’s sobbing. I can barely understand her, but when she calms down she tells me that every train out of Prague has been canceled. Almost every train out of the Czech Republic.

This is when it hits us, like the edge of a storm. Normal, then drenching rain. I ran around the AirBnB packing up my items, doing a last sweep, locking the door. I remember feeling my heart beating in my stomach. Every page I scrolled to, every email I read: borders closing, businesses closed, trains canceled, go home now.

I waited at the bus stop. It was 6 o’clock in the morning and there was not a single person on the street. When the bus pulled up, I waited at the front but the doors didn’t open. The back doors did. I walked over and got on the bus. It was empty. A mess of police tape had been draped across the front of the bus to keep all passengers at least 6 feet from the driver, who was wearing a face mask. I didn’t have to pay because the driver didn’t want to have to handle my coins.

The bus lurched through the silent city. When I reached the train station, I ran inside. I found Georgena sitting on a concrete bench, the only person in the vast station. Even the lights were off. It was freezing.

There was only one thing left to do. We used our phones to buy Georgena a $500 flight to Finland, with a long layover before she could fly to Riga, and we went to the airport even though my flight wasn’t for another 6 hours and Georgena’s wasn’t for 10 hours. I texted my mom, telling her I needed to come home.

The airport was like a scene from an apocalypse.

All of the restaurants, cafés, and shops had bars pulled down and the lights off. All of the chairs were stacked to perilous heights and yellow police tap was wrapped around them. Even at 7am, the airport was crowded with people, but not workers. There was one airline worker for each airline standing at the head of long, twisting lines, and the departures boards around the terminal flashed red, over half the flights out of the country canceled already.

Georgena and I sat on the ground, stomachs rumbling. We hadn’t had anything to eat and all the shops were closed. More and more people poured into the airport as the tense hours unfolded and my flight time approached one endless minute after another. They wouldn’t list the gate until 2 hours before the flight, so we stayed, leaning against the wall in the main terminal and watched flight after flight change from TBD to CANCELED.

We checked our phones, waited for our parents to wake up so we could call them and cry. Every muscle in my body was stiff. There was no relaxing. I couldn’t even feel annoyed at the delays, at the inconveniences, at the lack of chairs because the anxiety was all consuming. Would we even be able to leave Prague?

When they woke up, my mom and grandpa back in the States found me a flight home from Marseille on Tuesday, so I just needed to get back to Aix, then I’d be ok. My leg kept shaking.

After a few hours, we noticed people with food. I left Georgena and ventured into the chaos. The whole terminal felt like lightning crackled through the air. Tense. Uncertain. You could have cut the anxiety and panic and fear in the air with a knife. I couldn’t help but feel like COVID germs were covering my hands, my face. Masks weren’t normal yet and I certainly didn’t have one. I wasn’t too worried about actually being sick with Covid. I was worried about the part where if I got it, I’d have to be quarantined for 2 weeks in a city that was rapidly resembling a dystopian science fiction movie.

I found a tiny flight shop down a small hallway. The line was thirty people long but eventually I was able to buy us some granola bars and sandwiches, but I was too anxious to eat. I put the sandwich in my backpack because if I could just make it on the plane, I felt everything would be ok, and then I’d finally be able to eat.

We kept waiting as more and more people arrived. As couples tugged at their hair when flights were canceled and babies cried and what were obviously study abroad students hugged white-faced host parents and wiped away tears and walked stiffly across the airport.

Several times I approached an airline worker. “Can you please just tell me how likely my flight is to actually leave? Is it likely to get canceled?”

The airline worker would raise their hands in an I-don’t-know with an expression that clearly indicated they wanted to go cry in the bathroom. We were researching car rentals to see if we would have to find a way to drive out of this country.

Then the gate for my flight popped up and I bid Georgena a tentative goodbye, loathe to leave her, but I had to take my chance. The flight was full. Seated beside me, a tremendously tall man told me that he’d been in the Czech Republic for three years playing basketball but that they were all told to leave as soon as they could.

I had a layover in Heathrow and it was like a completely different world. All the restaurants were open, no one was hesitant to be around other people. None of the flights were canceled. I started breathing easier. Then my mom called me.

In the US, Trump was closing the borders after March 16th. The flight she’d booked me on to get home on Tuesday the 17th (Marseille to Heathrow to Denver) was already canceled. With some finagling, my grandpa was able to get me on an identical flight on Monday.

I flew to Marseille, wondering what I would find. France was closed down like Prague…so would it feel just as eerie? Would they even let me enter France because I was not a permanent resident? Would the fact that I’d been in Prague (which was in a state of emergency) prevent me from entering France? It is unlikely that that would occur, especially because I had a long-stay visa, but everything was so unknown and changing every minute.

When I arrived, I took a bus to Aix, walked 45 minutes through dark, abandoned streets back to my host family’s house, arriving at 7pm. I packed up a whole semester’s worth of things, slept a few hours (badly), and got in a taxi with all my gear at 3:45 am. My host family’s house was silent. All of Aix was dead and dark.

I took the taxi to the bus station, then the bus to the airport. The Marseille airport was nearly abandoned. All the practical students had left already rather than taking their chances and going on their spring break trips like overconfident idiots. I got on the flight and flew back to Heathrow. I’d been there 14 hours before. I had a five hour layover and I waited by the gate. One hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, the gate attendant told me I could not get on the flight. Covid checkpoints had opened in the US the day before and the Denver airport didn’t have one of those checkpoints. None of us were allowed on the plane.

I waited in line with a harried customer service agent. For thirty minutes she tried to find me a work around. Finally, she got me a flight to Los Angeles that would arrive at 8:30pm in California. My flight to Denver wasn’t until 6pm the next day. The thought of a night in the airport and another day of suffering through the uncertainty was crushing. I called my mom with the news and she searched for other options. If I could make it through security and the Covid checkpoint quickly, there was an 11pm Southwest flight from LA to Denver. Of course, both of us had been reading horror stories all day of Covid checkpoint wait times being 6 hours.

I was running on 31 hours of airport and travel time, four hours of sleep, and pure anxiety at that point. When our plane sat on the runway for an hour in Heathrow, my chances of getting home quickly seemed to dwindle before my eyes. Even when we took off, I did not sleep the entire flight. The woman next to me wore a giant face mask and put hand sanitizer on every thirty minutes. I felt like I was choking on Covid germs.

In LAX, the Covid line was thankfully short. I answered a series of questions, got my temperature taken, then was led quickly through passport control. I grabbed my suitcases, waited in line at customs, then asked the nearest airport worker what terminal Southwest was on. It was 10:25. The Southwest terminal was a 15-20 minute walk away.

I ran. My backpack bounced against my back and I gripped the handles of two checked bags. At this point, all that was moving my legs was desperation.

The Southwest terminal, unlike the international arrivals terminal, was deserted. Two airline workers waited behind the desk and I stumbled up to them panting. “It is too late to catch the 11pm flight?” It was 10:40 at this point.

“Don’t worry,” they said as they took my two checked bags. “We’ll make sure they hold the plane for you.”

I walked onto the completely empty plane five minutes before take-off, collapsed in a row, and slept the whole flight.