International travel

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Opti
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Re: International travel

Post by Opti » Sat Dec 18, 2021 5:51 pm

Thanks sTeamy! Good stuff.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:26 am

WFJ wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:34 pm
shpalman wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:01 pm
German govt considers classifying Britain as “virus variant area”
Under German COVID rules, travellers returning from virus variant areas must quarantine for two weeks, even if they are vaccinated.
I do not think they will, as it is not the federal government that is asking for this, but at the moment I am half hoping they do to give me an excuse to cancel my plans.
Germany is tightening restrictions on travel from the UK in an attempt to curb the spread of the Omicron variant.
From midnight on Sunday – or 11pm UK time – there will be a ban on carriage from the UK to Germany, except for German nationals, residents and transit passengers.

Everyone entering Germany from Britain, whether vaccinated or not, will need a negative PCR test and is required to quarantine for 14 days.

The country’s public health authority, the Robert-Koch-Institut, announced the new rules on Saturday evening as it classified the UK as an area of variants of concern due to Omicron.

It said the restrictions could last until at least 3 January
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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

WFJ wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:34 pm
shpalman wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:01 pm
German govt considers classifying Britain as “virus variant area”
Under German COVID rules, travellers returning from virus variant areas must quarantine for two weeks, even if they are vaccinated.
I do not think they will, as it is not the federal government that is asking for this, but at the moment I am half hoping they do to give me an excuse to cancel my plans.
Well, there we are: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ron-spread
From midnight on Sunday – or 11pm UK time – carriers such as airlines are banned from transporting British tourists to Germany. Only German citizens and residents, their partners and children, and transit passengers will be allowed to travel to the country from the UK.

Anyone entering Germany from Britain will need a negative PCR test and is required to quarantine for 14 days, regardless of vaccination status.

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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am

Lol. Ninja’d

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:30 am

By about 8 hours plus one minute. What are the chances?
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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Sun Dec 19, 2021 8:29 am

shpalman wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:30 am
By about 8 hours plus one minute. What are the chances?
??

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Sun Dec 19, 2021 8:35 am

headshot wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 8:29 am
shpalman wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:30 am
By about 8 hours plus one minute. What are the chances?
??
The timestamps at the Guardian are Sat 18 Dec 2021 23.48 GMT for the full story which you posted and 22:41 for the liveblog post, so either of us had all night to post about it here, and yet we both posted within about a minute of each other this morning.
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Re: International travel

Post by WFJ » Sun Dec 19, 2021 1:56 pm

headshot wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:27 am
WFJ wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:34 pm
I do not think they will, as it is not the federal government that is asking for this, but at the moment I am half hoping they do to give me an excuse to cancel my plans.
Well, there we are: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ron-spread
From midnight on Sunday – or 11pm UK time – carriers such as airlines are banned from transporting British tourists to Germany. Only German citizens and residents, their partners and children, and transit passengers will be allowed to travel to the country from the UK.

Anyone entering Germany from Britain will need a negative PCR test and is required to quarantine for 14 days, regardless of vaccination status.
Lebkuchen and Stollen instead of mince pies and Christmas cake for me again this year then.

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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Sun Dec 19, 2021 4:25 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 8:35 am
headshot wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 8:29 am
shpalman wrote:
Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:30 am
By about 8 hours plus one minute. What are the chances?
??
The timestamps at the Guardian are Sat 18 Dec 2021 23.48 GMT for the full story which you posted and 22:41 for the liveblog post, so either of us had all night to post about it here, and yet we both posted within about a minute of each other this morning.
Gotcha.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Fri Dec 24, 2021 2:25 pm

"People who qualify as fully vaccinated for travel to England can now end self-isolation after 7 days with 2 negative lateral flow tests."

... so I could have come to England yesterday and be allowed to stop self-isolating just in time to come back.
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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Fri Dec 24, 2021 4:30 pm

shpalman wrote:
Fri Dec 24, 2021 2:25 pm
"People who qualify as fully vaccinated for travel to England can now end self-isolation after 7 days with 2 negative lateral flow tests."

... so I could have come to England yesterday and be allowed to stop self-isolating just in time to come back.
Meanwhile in Germany...it's 14 days - regardless of status. So we could have gone there for our 8 day visit and come home and would have still been in the German quarantine period on New Year's Day.

Side note: We rearranged our flights for April and were a little dismayed to find that Lufthansa would charge us more if the flights were costlier, but wouldn't refund if they were cheaper (which they were). So we just rebooked. Then, the day after, they cancelled and rescheduled our rebooked April flight which made us qualify for a refund...so we did that. Now we can book the April flights at the lower prices!

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Tue Dec 28, 2021 4:20 pm

Innsbruck airport denies 110 Britons entry over new Covid rules
Police said many were probably caught out on Sunday by a new rule requiring a negative PCR test within 48 hours.

Austrian opposition politicians blamed the health minister for failing to update restrictions on the internet.
...

The restrictions, currently displayed on the Austrian UK embassy website, require anyone over the age of 12 to have a third Covid vaccination and a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of arrival. Under the previous rules a negative PCR test had to be taken within 72 hours of arrival.

While many reportedly had older PCR tests, some also had not received booster doses.

One tourist, Victoria Winstanley, said on social media that the team checking Covid certificates for an Easyjet flight either did not have up-to-date information or were not checking them properly.
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Re: International travel

Post by sTeamTraen » Wed Dec 29, 2021 9:01 pm

shpalman wrote:
Tue Dec 28, 2021 4:20 pm
Innsbruck airport denies 110 Britons entry over new Covid rules
Police said many were probably caught out on Sunday by a new rule requiring a negative PCR test within 48 hours.

Austrian opposition politicians blamed the health minister for failing to update restrictions on the internet.
...

The restrictions, currently displayed on the Austrian UK embassy website, require anyone over the age of 12 to have a third Covid vaccination and a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of arrival. Under the previous rules a negative PCR test had to be taken within 72 hours of arrival.

While many reportedly had older PCR tests, some also had not received booster doses.

One tourist, Victoria Winstanley, said on social media that the team checking Covid certificates for an Easyjet flight either did not have up-to-date information or were not checking them properly.
48 hours for a PCR is hard, especially if it's (a) based on arrival rather than departure time, and (b) during a holiday period, when testing centres may have reduced hours. And that's without the current overwhelmed status of many labs. Spain had that for about a week in the summer and moved it out to 72 hours.

I saw an unhappy story in the summer of someone who got their PCR sample done at 9am UK time on Wednesday for a flight that took off at 06:40 UK time on Friday and landed in Spain 1:50 later, at 08:30 UK time, so within the 48 hours. But the check-in person insisted that the local landing time in Spain (09:30) was a real extra hour, and insisted that the test was out of time. The passenger's Facebook profile said she had a degree in maths, but this was no match for the jobsworth backed up by the threat of calling security.

We also had problems at this end with check-in staff not understanding that the UK government's rules for pre-flight test validity are (a) measured in days, not hours (e.g., a test at 10am on Wednesday morning is still OK at 9pm on Friday, because it's any time in the preceding two calendar days), and (b) counted until the plane's departure time, rather than arrival.

More widely, one of the issues I have with a lot of Covid restrictions, especially related to travel, is that governments have effectively outsourced no-appeal enforcement of regulations to minimum-wage staff with other loyalties (airlines, ground handling companies), and very often in other countries. Yes, we all ought to Stay The f.ck At Home, but in between the posh people who can't do without their skiing and the gormless influencers in Dubai, there are families who haven't seen each other in a couple of years, and Christmas reunions with people who won't be here next year.
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Re: International travel

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Dec 29, 2021 10:38 pm

A 48 hour PCR isn’t hard to obtain. There are lots of companies offering same day or next day tests. But they cost a lot of money and so testing has now become a significant proportion of the price of international travel.

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Re: International travel

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Dec 29, 2021 11:13 pm

For instance, my last trip to the UK was 20€ for the ticket, 40€ for luggage and 125€ for tests.

Christmas with family: priceless (ish. Up to a few hundred euros anyway.)
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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Thu Dec 30, 2021 8:18 am

I would have needed a pre-departure test, a day 2 PCR*, and another pre-departure* test (which could have been a rapid test but couldn't have been a self-test) to come back. I suppose the tests marked * could have both been done at Stansted.

That's assuming the rules (on keeping Omicron out of the UK... ha) didn't change again, I kind of stopped following when I just decided not to bother.

So the testing requirements had their intended effect, I suppose.

The last time I was in the UK, just over a year ago, I paid extra for a 24 hour PCR but anyway it was a self test, and the date they put on it was the date they received the swab, and the 24 hours is also from them receiving it. But that was even before Alpha, so nobody really cared and I just emailed my local health service once I'd got home.
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Re: International travel

Post by Sciolus » Thu Dec 30, 2021 8:34 am

sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Dec 29, 2021 9:01 pm
More widely, one of the issues I have with a lot of Covid restrictions, especially related to travel, is that governments have effectively outsourced no-appeal enforcement of regulations to minimum-wage staff with other loyalties (airlines, ground handling companies), and very often in other countries. Yes, we all ought to Stay The f.ck At Home, but in between the posh people who can't do without their skiing and the gormless influencers in Dubai, there are families who haven't seen each other in a couple of years, and Christmas reunions with people who won't be here next year.
They did that years ago though.

If I were a w.nker, or if I were addressing a w.nker, I would add: It's funny how rules are fine when it's bogus asylum seekers coming over here taking our jobs and scrounging our benefits, but not when it's nice middle-class people like us that are affected. But at least one of those isn't the case so I won't.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Thu Dec 30, 2021 8:51 am

Opti wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 1:30 pm
Does anyone here know what the situation is for UK citizens trying to drive down through France to get to their second homes in Spain? Can they do it?

I'm having fun watching a bunch of snowbirds losing their sh.t on local FB groups. "It's not fair".
Britons with homes in EU told they can’t drive through France to get there
According to the French travel guidance, “nationals of the European Union or equivalent”, as well as their partners and children, “who have their main residence in France or who join, in transit through France, their main residence in a country of the European Union” are considered to have a compelling reason for travelling from the UK through France.

What does France’s travel ban mean for UK holiday plans?
According to French officials, British citizens who have a residence in another EU country, such as Belgium, Germany, Spain or Italy, will be required to show proof of their residence, such as a residency permit, tax forms or utility bills.
So, Britons with residency in EU can drive through France to get there?
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Re: International travel

Post by Opti » Thu Dec 30, 2021 9:05 am

AIUI, EU residents, that is, sTeamy, myself, you, f.ex. would be able to travel through France to get home. Second home owners, not so much.

Whether the tunnel and Ferry operators would let us is a different kettle of worms.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: International travel

Post by FlammableFlower » Thu Dec 30, 2021 9:46 am

Was interested in how France is taking travel from the UK very seriously. My parents had some French friends visit them just before Christmas. On their (the friends) return to Brittany they had to give something similar to our Passenger Locator Form - except they had a visit from the gendarmes to check they really were isolating where they said they'd be. They also then had to test and get permission to travel within France to their family in Normandy for Christmas itself.

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Re: International travel

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:15 am

shpalman wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 8:51 am
Britons with homes in EU told they can’t drive through France to get there
According to the French travel guidance, “nationals of the European Union or equivalent”, as well as their partners and children, “who have their main residence in France or who join, in transit through France, their main residence in a country of the European Union” are considered to have a compelling reason for travelling from the UK through France.

What does France’s travel ban mean for UK holiday plans?
According to French officials, British citizens who have a residence in another EU country, such as Belgium, Germany, Spain or Italy, will be required to show proof of their residence, such as a residency permit, tax forms or utility bills.
So, Britons with residency in EU can drive through France to get there?
The Guardian article seems to say both yes and no. It's almost as if the writer's intention was to fill space with anecdotes than to convey precise information in an unambiguous manner. :roll:
Opti wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 9:05 am
AIUI, EU residents, that is, sTeamy, myself, you, f.ex. would be able to travel through France to get home. Second home owners, not so much.
Mrs sTeamTraen and I wave our French and Irish passports, respectively, in your general direction.
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Re: International travel

Post by Opti » Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:22 am

sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:15 am

...
Mrs sTeamTraen and I wave our French and Irish passports, respectively, in your general direction.
Yes, you would, wouldn't you. I forgot that.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:15 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:15 am
The Guardian article seems to say both yes and no. It's almost as if the writer's intention was to fill space with anecdotes than to convey precise information in an unambiguous manner. :roll:
It's almost as if the British don't actually understand the concept of being resident somewhere.
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Re: International travel

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:44 pm

shpalman wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:15 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:15 am
The Guardian article seems to say both yes and no. It's almost as if the writer's intention was to fill space with anecdotes than to convey precise information in an unambiguous manner. :roll:
It's almost as if the British don't actually understand the concept of being resident somewhere.
This seems to be the answer.

Residents can go home, but you can't go on holiday.

If you haven't sorted your paperwork by now you're probably a tit.
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Re: International travel

Post by Opti » Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:47 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:44 pm
shpalman wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:15 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:15 am
The Guardian article seems to say both yes and no. It's almost as if the writer's intention was to fill space with anecdotes than to convey precise information in an unambiguous manner. :roll:
It's almost as if the British don't actually understand the concept of being resident somewhere.
This seems to be the answer.

Residents can go home, but you can't go on holiday.

If you haven't sorted your paperwork by now you're probably a tit.
FIFY
Time for a big fat one.

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