EVER tried getting on a boat in stormy conditions and you feel it rocking and rolling under your feet as you scramble to clamber onboard without falling into the raging sea? Well, travel in Europe feels a bit like that these days.
Everything seems to be creaking at the seams in Europe and ex-Europe (which would be the UK, with or without a Prime Minister). Airports are choc-a-bloc. Heathrow has told airlines to stop selling summer tickets (because it cannot cope) and Amsterdam’s Schiphol wants to cut flights by 20 percent by 2023 (because it says Earth cannot cope). Try taking the trains and they too are choo-chooing away with full loads and high prices.
And who can blame the continent for creaking at the seams? Imagine a big hulking piece of ancient machinery that was mostly asleep for at least a year and then woke up from its coma to suddenly find itself having to cope with hundreds of thousands of humans who had been locked up for the same amount of time, all wanting to get somewhere, to hug someone they love?
On top of that, they have to deal with a war, rising costs, disappearing workers, climate change warnings, bad weather, good weather …
It’s a zombie movie worthy of making – Zombies in Travel or, since we love acronyms so much in travel, ZiT. (Dare I call Peter Jackson?) Hundreds of thousands of humans, in catatonic state, moving through immigration, customs, baggage collection in chaotic state – you truly have to default to zombie state to get through all that.
In Asia, we are not quite at that zombie-state yet in terms of travel. Being a laggard in recovery, I guess, has its advantages. It lets you learn from other people’s mistakes and gives you time to prepare for the eventual coming.
In Singapore, Changi Airport is planning to reopen two of its terminals that were shuttered due to Covid. Terminal 4 will reopen in September and departure operations in the southern wing of Terminal 2 will restart from October. Singapore Airlines Ltd aims to be operating at only 67% of its pre-Covid capacity by September. Thailand and Australia have opened their doors to unvaccinated travellers effective July, and this gradual easing of restrictions seems to be making things more manageable on the ground here. Let’s face it, international travel is not fully back across Asia yet. Some parts remain partially or fully closed.
I have zombies on my mind because I am suffering from severe jetlag (must be out of practice) after almost three weeks of languishing among the vineyards and beaches of France, bobbing along the canals of Amsterdam and lying about in Hyde Park in London, soaking in the sun and waiting for Adele to sing “Hello” which she did, and promptly got all emotional at the start because this was her first concert in three years. Her screeching fans wept along.
Also, I am in the thick of Margaret Atwood’s “Burning Questions” in which she devotes an entire essay to the subject of zombies.
Ruminating about our fascination with zombie movies and the “zombie apocalypse”, she writes, “Zombies exist without past or future, and thus outside time. Although they themselves are symbols of death, they paradoxically live outside death, since time and death are inter-related. In some ways, zombies are oddly blessed – though I do stress, oddly. So the zombie apocalypse may be an escape from a real future we quite rightly fear – due to the predictions of climate change and the societal collapse that haunt our times – into a fearsome future that is not at all real and therefore consoling.” (Let that sink in, please.)
Eddie’s electric cab.
Trying to console myself, my mind harked back to the conversation I had with the London cab driver who drove me to Heathrow. Eddie drives the TX Electric Taxi, made by the London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC). Introduced in 2018, it is the biggest transformation of the classic London black cab in more than 100 years.
Eddie (we are on first name terms now as he’s given me his card so he can be my driver for future trips) tells me it’s actually a hybrid – it runs on a battery for a certain range (70 miles), and has a petrol engine “range extender” for longer distances.
Most importantly, it’s more economical for him. He pays a weekly rate of £320 (£400 with petrol) compared to £500 when he was driving diesel. “It’s an amazing vehicle, it regenerates electricity through the brakes and there’s energy propulsion.” I think that’s what he said because this was 6am in the morning.
Eddie told me he nearly became a zombie during the pandemic because he lost his job and couldn’t pay his household bills and debts. Then one day (circa summer 2021), drinking at a pub, and drowning his sorrows, he bumped into a friend and fellow taxi driver who asked him if he wanted to be a cast driver, for seven months, 14 hours a day.
Quicker than he could swallow the pint, he said yes and found himself as the driver for the cast of “House of the Dragon, Season 1”. If you are a Game of Thrones fan, you will know this is a big deal. This series begins about 200 years before the War of the Five Kings, and 100 years after the Targaryen Conquest united the Seven Kingdoms, and will premiere August 21, 2022.
Eddie didn’t tell me too much of the storyline – there wasn’t the time as there wasn’t a lot of traffic for a change – but he did tell me of the locations he drove the cast to, including Holywell Bay Beach in Cornwall and Castleton, a village in the High Peak district of Derbyshire. While at Castleton, he went into a souvenir shop and told the woman to stop stocking up on dragons and swords for the following summer. She asked why and Eddie just winked at her, and said, “Trust me.”
I hope she gets to sell lots of dragons and swords this summer, and I predict Cornwall and Derbyshire will become the new hot spots for GoT fans. Eddie, meanwhile, is going off for his first summer family holiday to Mallorca. “13 of us, our first time together as a family. I’ve managed to pay off all our debts and have enough for a family holiday. I can’t wait.”
So to all the Eddies of the world, the zombies and the dragons, let’s fly free and face the future, whatever it may bring.
