Thread by @WhalePanda

The insanity of travelling during Covid.
The plan was a simple Friday-Sunday trip to Bucharest.
Due to airlines having less routes there were no direct flights Brussels - Bucharest.
No worries @lufthansa had me covered
Brussels - Frankfurt - Bucharest
Bucharest -Vienna - Brussels

Every country has its own rules, own locater/registry forms etc.
So for the first leg to Germany you need a negative PCR test. No worries. Panda went to take the test on Wednesday. Now some websites said it couldnt be older than 48 hours, other said 72. Anyway mine was 48. Gucci.

But wait I got an email from Lufthansa to upload all my documents already and they obviously mentioned the German locator form. I upload the pcr test and not the locator form because that's not needed for transit.
10 mins later I got a mail it got denied without the form. Uch.

Fine, they didnt check if it was just a transfer. Idiots. Whatever.
Romania has its own system and doesnt follow the European standards. So Belgium is a yellow zone (PCR test required) and Germany is green (no test). Whatevs. I got the test.

To fly back (Bucharest - Vienna - Brussels) I don't need a PCR test. Cool.
However my instinct told me to do the test Friday morning before I took the flight in Brussels. 72 hours should cover my weekend. As a planner this seemed like a no-brainer if any authorities causes issues

Thursday evening I check in. "You need to pick up boarding passes at the checkin". Sigh, whatevs fine.
Friday morning I take the "unnecessary" PCR test, I go to the checkin desk.
"Can you show a valid pcr test"
"Yes"
"Did you fill out the Romanian locator form?"
"Damnit.. done"

Romanian locator form was only mentioned for people coming from red zones but whatevs.
Flight to Frankfurt went fine. When getting out of the plane I got stopped by police to check my pcr test. (Why me?)
Lounges in Germany dont serve food. Damnit and this 4 hour layover!

Flight to Bucharest was 25 mins late but ok. Arriving there it was.. chaotic.
They were confused because of my transit in Germany. Even though I filled out the Romanian locator form digitally they sent me to a "doctor" where I had to fill out the form again and show the pcr test.

Bucharest was good. Nice weather. Surprisingly green city. A mix between Greece, Prague and Ukraine. Weird combo but it was nice. All restaurants and bars were open which was nice.

Austrian Airlines sent me a mail to fill out the Austrian locator form.. even though I just had a transfer in Vienna.
For a transfer in Vienna you dont need a pcr test or locator form. They could've checked for connecting flights again. Whatevs.

Saturday evening I checked in online and got the boarding passes. Cool, no need to go to the checkin desk this time.
Also with Austrian you have to wear a FFP2 mask, luckily I knew this and I took one with me.
All good and ready to go home.

Arrived to the airport a bit early Sunday but all good, there's a burger king. Lounge closed though. Doh.
Now I had 2 options to fly back. 1 was a 40 mins layover in Frankfurt. The other one was a 55 mins one in Vienna. So obviously I went for Vienna.
That was a mistake.

The inbound flight was 1 hour late. There were issues with the system so they couldnt scan boarding passes and had to do it all manually. In the end we left 1 hour 25 mins late. Crap
I did call the helpdesk and all they said was "we can only do something after you land in Vienna"

Now this is just a normal "my flight is late so I missed my connection" story... However this is when it gets complicated.
Normally I had no pretravel clearance to enter Austria and no PCR test.
There was another flight to Brussels that in theory I could've made...

But well of course we had to get off the plane and get in a bus. Then people with a transfer had to enter another bus which had to wait for all passengers...
Then I had to show my passport 3 times to 3 different people and need to go through another security check.
Yeah.. nope.

I had to get my flight rebooked. I had to exit and "enter" Austria without the form. I managed to do that, probably in an illegal way, run to the Austrian desk and get my flights rebooked.. lucky for me there was a Vienna - Frankfurt - Brussels trip available.

Easy enough right? Well except for the fact that you can only get on the flight to Germany with a PCR test.
Guess I was lucky? Or just well prepared?
I am on my last leg of the journey now. I filled in the Belgian passenger locator form flying from Austria. Will they stop me? 🤷‍♂️

Anyway long story short. With so many different entry and transfer rules, regulations and forms.. if something goes wrong it is really difficult not to get stuck somewhere.
I miss carefree travel.