Back in the Netherlands from our Portugal trip – the return flight from Faro with KLM subsidiary airline Transavia encountered foggy skies in Eindhoven and we were redirected to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Facing the option of being transported to Eindhoven by bus from Amsterdam, which could take several hours past midnight, we decided to take the train back south to meet up with family and have a midnight supper.
A dreaded global disease started to interfere with our further travel plans. Covid-19 would soon become a global pandemic with millions of dead people and a forever changed world order. Face masks were the advised item of protection, so we ordered a pack from Amazon-Netherlands and got ready to fly out from Schiphol Amsterdam to JFK in New York a week later.
John F. Kennedy airport is one of the older and largest international airports in the world, which is probably the reason why the international arrival hall can easily accommodate at least 5,000 passengers coming from all over the world to this junction of global contamination challenges.
Our “waiting in line time” exceeded almost 3 hours before getting through customs and immigration amidst some 5,000 arrivals. And we were convinced this should pretty much guarantee our infection by the Corona virus, as the disease was initially called.
Since we left New York that same afternoon for Jacksonville, Florida, we realized that if we had acquired the disease, we would be perfect spreaders. But the panic had not started yet and it would take several more weeks, before the real picture of the pandemic overtook the world and closed it down.
In the meantime we were just “hanging” in our friend’s cabin on the Santa Fé river near High Springs, Florida, preparing for our four week planned trip to our stomping grounds on the Caribbean Island of St.Martin/St.Maarten in March.
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