Traveling in the time of COVID-19 is complicated, let alone relocating to another country. The challenge is double, if not triple, and it’s a long journey, both literally and metaphorically! But that’s exactly what we’d been through in the last few weeks as my family and I were moving from Lund, Sweden, to Jogja, Indonesia.
Before Departure
When we first decided that we’re gonna move back to Indonesia this year, we tried to make the transition as smooth as possible. The idea was to have a less hassle travel, ideally with few baggages and minimum drama. So we started sending our stuffs via cargo as early as in February, even when we had no date of departure (yet) that time. There was a friend who arranged a delivery from Malmö to Jakarta so we joined her since it was a good opportunity to send some of our books home. We also started to check the current travel’s rules and regulations both in Europe and in Indonesia, the list of the quarantine hotels and the airlines services. But it’s not until late May that we finally decided to choose Qatar Airways.
We didn’t book the ticket right away though as we were busy with other things and we were still pretty anxious about the COVID-19 situation. After receiving our first shot of COVID-19 vaccine in the last week of June and knew exactly when our second doses would be given, we booked the tickets and prepared ourselves for the big move more seriously, including tried to find a service to send our stuffs (again), a place for quarantine and a school for my first born in Indonesia.
From that day on, the to do list was endless. We had to pack our stuffs, contacting cargo services, selling some stuffs, having school trials, and so on. Luckily, H got a place in the school that we preferred and she started to join the online school from Sweden which means she had to stay awake at 03.00-07.00 am (CEST) from Monday – Friday. At around the same time, I started to work for a company that based in Indonesia and Western Australia, so we were kind of living with a reverse schedule 😀 .
To make matters worse, the Indonesian Government decided to extend the duration of quarantine for travellers entering Indonesia from July 6, 2021 due to the spike of COVID-19 cases in the country. It affected our plans of course and we were scared to go home to be honest.
August came and the situation in Indonesia was getting better so we were a bit relieved. But knowing that our departure was less than a month, our pace automatically increased. In addition to routines, we started to visit some friends to bid farewell, to pack our stuffs, and to go to some places that we’d been wanted to visit for a long time.
Everything seemed to be under control.
A friend told us about Pulang Kampung, a cargo service from Europe to Indonesia. We decided to use their service although that means we had to arrange the delivery from Sweden to Germany by ourselves. Pulang Kampung recommended Ecoparcel for delivery within Europe so we used it and was happy with its service. We also managed to sell or give away some of our stuffs, we had booked the hotel for quarantine as well as transit hotel for the days in between returning the apartment key to the date of departure. In short, it was pretty good.
But then, another drama kicked in!
When we were in Kullaberg Naturreservat, I got an email from Qatar Airways saying that our flight was cancelled due to operational reasons. I called them right away to get the replacement date, then modified the dates for our quarantine hotel and the transit hotel.
The last week of August came without warning and brought another level of stress as we had to deal with the inspection, which means, we had to clean out our apartment thoroughly.
We decided to use the service from Flyttstädninglund, and it was good at the beginning. They cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen very well, but I think at the end they were kind of in a rush so they left some stains on the walls, the windows, and on the floors so we had to come to the rescue as the inspection was in the next morning. At that time, we had not finished our packings and our stuffs were just in the boxes in our basement. It was already 10 pm when we finished the cleaning and it was not possible to continue packing nor sleeping in the apartment that night. Luckily, our friends were kind enough to let us crash at their place and to use their motor home as a portable storage for our boxes 😀
The next morning, the inspection went quick and well but the packing was slow. And among other things we had the PCR Test appointment in the afternoon. Again, with a huge help from our friends, we managed to do the test and was planning to go to the transit hotel and had a dinner with our friends who live in Malmö.
That was when we realised, we ran out of time to finish everything on time!
So we decided to go separate ways, geographically speaking 😀 . Z and H went to Malmö first, K and I went to the transit hotel to do the check in. We chose Lundia Hotel for the two nights stay prior to our departure because it was real close to Lund C. But right after checked in and I was on my way to Lund C to go to Malmö to meet our friends, I read an announcement in SkÃ¥netrafiken app. It said that there would be no train service from Lund to Malmö from August 28 to September 6. The regular trains were replaced by buses, so our options were to take the replacement bus or taxi from Lund to Malmö then continue by train to Copenhagen airport, or take taxi to the airport directly. We chose the latter as we couldn’t bear to have another drama. Also, by taking taxi, we didn’t have to worry about missing train or having another disruption, as well as we didn’t have to get our luggages on and off the train while taking care of the kids.
In Malmö, the dinner with our friends was really nice. The foods were delicious, and it was good to meet our friends who we rarely met due to pandemic. We went back to the hotel with a light mood. Thinking that we only need to deal with packing and that was it. But right before we were ready to sleep, Zaki realised that his camera bag was not anywhere in the room. We searched in panic and tried to locate where it was last time to no avail. The most possible place was in the train from Malmö C to Lund C so we contacted the lost and found department and filled out the missing items form. They said it could take up to 7 days before found items are visible in their system. We haven’t received any updates until now and Zaki seems to have let them go but deep inside, I still hope that there will be a good news about the bags and everything inside it soon.
The next day was still about packing but we made time to meet our friends for lunch, fika, and dinner. Meeting them was the thing that kept us sane so we didn’t mind at all. We also tried to finish all the paperworks (I’ll write more about this in Part 2). The packing was still not done at night, even after we bought another suitcase. But we were not in panic anymore. We thought that even if we couldn’t bring most things, we could just store them at our friends’s place and figured out about how to send them to Indonesia later.
Then, at around 10 pm, the fire alarm in the hotel went on. We went out with other hotel guests, the fire fighters came and that was when I lost it. I cried! I could not hold it anymore. It was just too much. Why couldn’t we have a smooth transition like we planned? Why did we just move from one drama to another? And what is it with us and the fire rescue? When we moved from Australia 9 years ago, we got to be rescued by the fire fighters too because the ceiling in our apartment’s living room collapsed in the middle of the night, just two weeks away from our departure date.
Anyway, it turned out the be a false alarm so we went back to our room, continued our packing until 05.30 in the morning.
There were so many dramas before our departure from Lund. It felt like, this Swedish city we call home in the last 5 years did not really want us to go 🙂
– To be continued –
Hayu Hamemayu 
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