Special COVID bulletin

My next article was supposed to be about the pets. Unfortunately, there’s something a little more critical to report.

All this week, we’ve been seeing news about the possibility of the EU closing their borders to travelers from the US, Russia, and Brasil because of our climbing Covid rates (and our overall inadequate response to the pandemic). As of today, it looks almost positive that the rule will go into effect July 1.

Now, it may not all be bad news – there are the usual exceptions made for citizens and people traveling home. Also, the member countries are not 100% obligated to follow the EU guidelines.In our case, we might be okay:

• Portugal indicated that they may exempt US travelers, although keep the ban on place for the other countries. We’ll find out more in the next few days.
• We’re not tourists – we’re residents. I have a signed promissory note for the lease with our address on it, and I’ve got a printed copy to show at Immigration Control to prove it. I’ve got an appointment with the Portuguese Commerce bureau to sign incorporation papers for my company (and start pumping money into the economy).
• I’m a Portuguese citizen, with a Portuguese passport and Portuguese national ID card, and Kristie is a citizen in the making with a copy of her application and case number from the Portuguese government.

Given these facts, we may be able to proceed with our current plans. But we realize that we might NOT be able to, or that there will be other changes required, so we’re already working on contingency plans.

If we flat out can’t travel for a couple of months, we’ll be renting a place here in town. Don’t forget, we sold the house and we need to move out before the end of July! Not only that, but we’ve already got rid of a lot of stuff, plus the container is already on its way to Portugal.

If we have to rent a place, the pets will stay with us until we can actually move, and we’ll readjust our plans with them as we go.

If we’re allowed to travel, but have to immediately quarantine for two weeks, we need to make different changes. Rather than travel to Lisbon for business purposes, we’ll need to go directly to Porto – we’ll probably rent a furnished apartment for the quarantine period because our place won’t have anything yet. This throws off my starting my company, and will add some complications with the pets, too, but it gets us there.

My personal worst-case scenario is that they tell us everything is OK, we get on the plane for the first leg to Boston, and then find out we can’t proceed from there. If that’s the case, my sister Kathi may be having house guests for an indeterminate amount of time …

Everything will get a lot clearer in the next week. I’m going to be talking to my lawyers and other people in Portugal, I’ve already sent a message to Immigration Control asking for clarification, and I’ll talk to the airline Monday.

Stay tuned for updates!