A Black Swan is a metaphor describing a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics. It is: unpredictable, carries a massive impact; and after the fact, we try to explain it in a way that makes it appear less random and more predictable than it was.
When I used this metaphor on Facebook about 10 days ago, little did I know that not one, but two black swans were swimming around the corner towards us. I then posted only about our next planned, scheduled and booked trip to Europe. We came back from Morocco in January (a few more posts on this trip are coming up), and a few days later I booked a flight to Rome for the end of March, returning from Paris in early May. We had 39 days for what we thought would be a great trip. We were in Italy some 4 years ago, and I have a friend in Milan who I wanted to visit again. Then I have friends in Germany, living close to the Austrian border near Salzburg: we’d visit them, too. Starting from Rome, going north, spending time with friends in Italy, Germany, visiting Salzburg, then a week in Prague, north to Berlin, Cologne and Paris (we love this city). I had the flights, most the accommodations and many of the trains booked. I hadn’t even put our travel gear away, and was just refilling the suitcases with what I thought we’d need for April in Europe.
Then reports from Northern Italy started appearing in our newspapers. There were a few cases of what later the WHO would name as COVID-19. We knew already that something big was happening in China. We’d seen scary reports from there. But it was in China. We were going to Europe. On February 23, some 155 cases were reported in some small communities in Northern Italy. Ten communities were locked down in an attempt to contain it. Then a day or so later we learned about more cases. As I am writing this exactly a month later, the reported cases for Italy are approaching 25K! This is 160 times more. In a month! For everyone that thinks it is just a flu, think again!
When the news first arrived, we decided to wait and see. We had more than a month…. Although the writing was on the wall, we still thought it would just make for some interesting travel. And then on March 2 came the Government of Canada advisory to avoid all non-essential travel in Northern Italy. That was a game changer. We knew at that point we didn’t have much of a choice. Did we want to be locked down in a foreign country somewhere in a hotel room for unknown time and without any idea how we’d get back home?
But we had a flight to Rome, which at the time was not on the advisory list and were flying back from Paris. Would we be able to cancel our flight or recover even a fraction of our money? As it happens, we would. All phone lines were either busy or had a message that due to high call volumes they could not take more phone calls. So, we waited until midnight and called Air Canada. This time we got through to an agent after about 30 min of waiting. We were lucky – not only did they refund our non-cancelable flight, but also made an exception and refunded our pre-paid seat selection fee. At that time there was no Covid-19 policy for the airlines. Not for the accommodations either.
Starting from trying to recover the biggest expense first, I gradually cancelled accommodations and then the most expensive train tickets. I corresponded with many of them, explaining our extenuating situation. Only one German hotel (Mondrian Suites Berlin) said NEIN (NO!). We can live with this. So far, I have recovered over 82% of our cost. I decided to leave alone the regional Italian trains that I’d booked. They offer refund in their kiosks, but we are not there. So be it. Good enough given that a second Black Swan appeared for us just after we cancelled the flight. This one more personal, without the attempt to explain it as predictable, and to write about later, perhaps. For now: we will start a new storyline – “Exploring our back yard” We have many photos from Toronto we intend to share. Perhaps we’ll travel around Ontario in the summer, after (and if) all this settles down. We do hope with the help of everyone in our society we can “flatten the curve” as our public health officials keep telling us. (Flattening the curve means slowing down the virus’ progress so the infections occur over a longer period of time, but the peak number of infections will be lower and easier for our health system to address.)
And so stay safe everybody wherever in the world you are!
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