Five years ago: I've been thinking about that strange time, too. I was in New York on business in February 2020, my first trip to the US as a non-citizen, as I had finally renounced in autumn 2019. I hadn't reached out to family and friends because I had a hectic week of workshops and analysis to do, but had planned to stay longer and maybe go see my dad upstate. But the news from Europe was getting scary, and my London-based client suggested getting back while I still could. I landed in Zurich in time to hear that there was an immediate ban on public gatherings, and that was that.
The next six months I was in a state of panic about my US family, especially my 80+-year-old father. What if he fell ill? What if I never saw him again? At first there were no flights, and even when air traffic haltingly resumed, as a Swiss citizen I had no entrance to the US. My young son was still a US citizen, so we figured if something bad happened we would try to leverage that. Fortunately we never had to find out. When I heard a rumor that the US was finally going to open to Europeans, I bought plane tickets (my German spouse thought that was a rash move). It was December 2021 before I could hug my dad again.
That fear of being unable to return to family drove most of the repatriations after the pandemic. I’m glad your dad made it through okay—but the not knowing and the helplessness of that time was awful.
It was an extraordinarily weird period of time, and sometimes I feel like I've just begun processing it. Writing about it is important. Oddly enough, my kids and I traveled back and forth from Istanbul to the US every summer from 2020 through the petering out ends of the pandemic in, shall we say, 2023? and never once during that period were we asked for anything other than negative PCR tests. Never vaccine forms, never anything else. And never at the port of entry. So weird how, despite all the lockstep in rules, there were some majorly disorganized and inconsistent mandates as well.
This is such a good point, and one I’d forgotten. The Swiss authorities cared (a lot), but upon arrival in the US, it was like they couldn’t be bothered to do the math to figure out if you’d had your PCR test within the mandatory 24 hours. So weird.
This is so Swiss: all the i's must be dotted and the t's crossed. Plus they tend to be scared shitless, ehm, overcompliant when it comes to US rules–– look at their recent history with banking.
Me too. And I'm not even in the US... it's awful no matter where you're watching the decline of American democracy from. Unless, of course, you're in the Kremlin.
It’s got to record these recollections. They prompt me to try to reconstruct my own, I should do so before they are just a vague jumble. But it was two years on an island with no escape options in the North Atlantic (Ireland) that clinched our choice to leave for France in retirement. When we broke the long travel fast to visit relatives in the US … it was not so different from what you described.
The Americanization of health care and the curse of private equity are ruinous. France has its share of troubles, but her people will always come first.
That's so interesting, John. As I mentioned, many people I know moved after the pandemic was over. I'd be curious to know what about your life during the pandemic drove the decision. Did old or long-simmering concerns or issues come to a head, or was it surprising to discover you were done and wanted/needed to move?
A lot of things came into focus my last several years of working in Ireland, and I suppose the pandemic and the confinement it forced just magnified things. Age was one thing--I had been exempted from the usual Irish mandatory retirement age simply due to arbitrary circumstances during the year I took employment in Ireland; I'd worked beyond an ordinary retirement date so things felt overdue.
But we were also concerned about the influence of the American presence in Ireland, which is significant from a business and investment perspective. It was clearly having an impact on housing as hedge funds began gobbling up properties, making a severe housing shortage even worse. And we could see attributes of American healthcare (such as medical coding and American private hospitals) gaining territory as well. Healthcare was a key issue for us, so that was a big factor in deciding to move to France. (I'd already spent a lot of time in France, and both my wife and I, as academics, had worked on French cultural topics.)
So, no real surprises, just circumstances that coalesced over a period of time.
Such a crazy time. I didn’t travel back to the US for almost 1.5 years. During that time, my mom started showing signs of dementia and by the time I finally made it home she was diagnosed. I always look at the last picture we took together before I left for Amsterdam and before she began to change into someone I can’t recognize anymore, and I think, “Wow! I had no idea all this was coming.” I remember on my first flight back to NYC from Amsterdam the plane was as empty as I’d ever seen. I could stretch out across the entire row.
Oh, what a poignant memory about your mom. We never know when something will be the last time while it's happening, and looking back, we always wish we could have somehow known.
Those empty planes were something. My son and I had an entire middle section to ourselves and slept the whole way. First-class space without the price—the upside to the plague!
I flew from the US to Portugal in January of '21. My first flight (the week before) was cancelled as we sat on the runway--someone at air traffic control in Jacksonville had COVID. Entire southeast was shut down. A week later, when I made it to Heathrow, the British Airways attendant said I couldn't enter Portugal; the borders were closed. I kicked it up to a supervisor and after showing my residency visa and a BUSINESS CARD(!!), on top of all the other paperwork, they let me through. Crazy times.
Oh man, what a harrowing journey! No one had any idea of what the rules were, as they were constantly changing. You could go to bed with one set of rules and wake up to a whole new set in the morning. That a business card did the trick is a great reminder of just how crazy that time was.
Yep, I remember that bizarre time during COVID when it got pretty scary for all of us living abroad. The Canadian embassy in Thailand sent me an email saying that I had to go home, to which I responded that I would be unable to since my Scottish husband and son wouldn't be welcome to join me. Luckily, they accepted that as a reason to allow me to stay in Thailand. Crazy!
As somebody with a multi-passport family, that right there is actually my nightmare. We should all probably have one common passport, but it’s never been possible.
Five years ago: I've been thinking about that strange time, too. I was in New York on business in February 2020, my first trip to the US as a non-citizen, as I had finally renounced in autumn 2019. I hadn't reached out to family and friends because I had a hectic week of workshops and analysis to do, but had planned to stay longer and maybe go see my dad upstate. But the news from Europe was getting scary, and my London-based client suggested getting back while I still could. I landed in Zurich in time to hear that there was an immediate ban on public gatherings, and that was that.
The next six months I was in a state of panic about my US family, especially my 80+-year-old father. What if he fell ill? What if I never saw him again? At first there were no flights, and even when air traffic haltingly resumed, as a Swiss citizen I had no entrance to the US. My young son was still a US citizen, so we figured if something bad happened we would try to leverage that. Fortunately we never had to find out. When I heard a rumor that the US was finally going to open to Europeans, I bought plane tickets (my German spouse thought that was a rash move). It was December 2021 before I could hug my dad again.
That fear of being unable to return to family drove most of the repatriations after the pandemic. I’m glad your dad made it through okay—but the not knowing and the helplessness of that time was awful.
It was an extraordinarily weird period of time, and sometimes I feel like I've just begun processing it. Writing about it is important. Oddly enough, my kids and I traveled back and forth from Istanbul to the US every summer from 2020 through the petering out ends of the pandemic in, shall we say, 2023? and never once during that period were we asked for anything other than negative PCR tests. Never vaccine forms, never anything else. And never at the port of entry. So weird how, despite all the lockstep in rules, there were some majorly disorganized and inconsistent mandates as well.
This is such a good point, and one I’d forgotten. The Swiss authorities cared (a lot), but upon arrival in the US, it was like they couldn’t be bothered to do the math to figure out if you’d had your PCR test within the mandatory 24 hours. So weird.
This is so Swiss: all the i's must be dotted and the t's crossed. Plus they tend to be scared shitless, ehm, overcompliant when it comes to US rules–– look at their recent history with banking.
Double taxation is the punishment the US government inflicts on us for daring to live elsewhere. It’s got to f*ing stop.
hear hear
The whole banking thing still haunts them and us (if you're an American trying to open a bank account here).
That’s what drove me out eventually— losing my pension fund investments 🤯
Trump country isn’t my country anyway. I’d like to sit out this particular crisis.
Me too. And I'm not even in the US... it's awful no matter where you're watching the decline of American democracy from. Unless, of course, you're in the Kremlin.
It’s got to record these recollections. They prompt me to try to reconstruct my own, I should do so before they are just a vague jumble. But it was two years on an island with no escape options in the North Atlantic (Ireland) that clinched our choice to leave for France in retirement. When we broke the long travel fast to visit relatives in the US … it was not so different from what you described.
The Americanization of health care and the curse of private equity are ruinous. France has its share of troubles, but her people will always come first.
That's so interesting, John. As I mentioned, many people I know moved after the pandemic was over. I'd be curious to know what about your life during the pandemic drove the decision. Did old or long-simmering concerns or issues come to a head, or was it surprising to discover you were done and wanted/needed to move?
Hi Elizabeth,
A lot of things came into focus my last several years of working in Ireland, and I suppose the pandemic and the confinement it forced just magnified things. Age was one thing--I had been exempted from the usual Irish mandatory retirement age simply due to arbitrary circumstances during the year I took employment in Ireland; I'd worked beyond an ordinary retirement date so things felt overdue.
But we were also concerned about the influence of the American presence in Ireland, which is significant from a business and investment perspective. It was clearly having an impact on housing as hedge funds began gobbling up properties, making a severe housing shortage even worse. And we could see attributes of American healthcare (such as medical coding and American private hospitals) gaining territory as well. Healthcare was a key issue for us, so that was a big factor in deciding to move to France. (I'd already spent a lot of time in France, and both my wife and I, as academics, had worked on French cultural topics.)
So, no real surprises, just circumstances that coalesced over a period of time.
Such a crazy time. I didn’t travel back to the US for almost 1.5 years. During that time, my mom started showing signs of dementia and by the time I finally made it home she was diagnosed. I always look at the last picture we took together before I left for Amsterdam and before she began to change into someone I can’t recognize anymore, and I think, “Wow! I had no idea all this was coming.” I remember on my first flight back to NYC from Amsterdam the plane was as empty as I’d ever seen. I could stretch out across the entire row.
Oh, what a poignant memory about your mom. We never know when something will be the last time while it's happening, and looking back, we always wish we could have somehow known.
Those empty planes were something. My son and I had an entire middle section to ourselves and slept the whole way. First-class space without the price—the upside to the plague!
That was indeed one of the upsides!
I flew from the US to Portugal in January of '21. My first flight (the week before) was cancelled as we sat on the runway--someone at air traffic control in Jacksonville had COVID. Entire southeast was shut down. A week later, when I made it to Heathrow, the British Airways attendant said I couldn't enter Portugal; the borders were closed. I kicked it up to a supervisor and after showing my residency visa and a BUSINESS CARD(!!), on top of all the other paperwork, they let me through. Crazy times.
There is a lesson here for all of us: good card stock opens doors. Literally!
Oh man, what a harrowing journey! No one had any idea of what the rules were, as they were constantly changing. You could go to bed with one set of rules and wake up to a whole new set in the morning. That a business card did the trick is a great reminder of just how crazy that time was.
Especially because it was a "cheesy" colorful one that I used for certain live events. But it was on thick stock and therefore, I seemed legit??? LOL
Yep, I remember that bizarre time during COVID when it got pretty scary for all of us living abroad. The Canadian embassy in Thailand sent me an email saying that I had to go home, to which I responded that I would be unable to since my Scottish husband and son wouldn't be welcome to join me. Luckily, they accepted that as a reason to allow me to stay in Thailand. Crazy!
As somebody with a multi-passport family, that right there is actually my nightmare. We should all probably have one common passport, but it’s never been possible.
This is why we all became Swiss when we had the chance.