COVID in Hungary

Then came COVID. I had to go home to Hungary, and T. went back to the Philippines. We didn't break up, and we made it through the two years apart.

Getting home was scary. It was pretty much the last plane from London, a British Airways repatriation flight, and as a European I could get on it. It was really weird: all the flight attendants wore hazmat suits and simply tossed sandwiches in Ziploc bags at us. In London there was almost no one at the airport, and the workers seemed to be saying that this was the end, the last plane out. In Hungary, at the airport, they gave me a gigantic red sticker to put on my door: suspected COVID patient, do not enter.

By then my grandma was in an old folks' home, so her apartment was empty and my mom gave it to me to use. It's the very apartment where I am right now. I stuck the red sticker on the door and stayed inside for two weeks. Friends told me the neighbors downstairs were already speculating about who the COVID patient was, and I was worried they'd lynch me.

I did my best to educate my grandma, but there was a COVID outbreak in her old folks' home anyway. About two months later she passed away. They said it wasn't only COVID; dementia played its part too. I'm just really happy I got to see her a few times before she died, because if I had stayed in Cayman, I never would have.

I probably wasn't used to Hungary anymore. I listened to the ambulances, which were loud and constant, and checked the numbers every day: how many died, how many were hospitalized. Hungary was doing really badly. I didn't work. I went for walks, saw my mom, and tried to get her as many good masks as possible.

For the vaccine I could only get the Russian Sputnik, and I really wanted Pfizer. So I had an idea: hop on a train, go to Romania and pick it up. It totally worked. I convinced my mom and her boyfriend, B., to come too, and we all got our Pfizer shots. I was so scared that I probably have more vaccinations than anybody: I count at least nine.

COVID had a silver lining too, and it led to one of the biggest achievements of my life. Flights were dirt cheap, and once they let people fly with masks and vaccinations, I went to Athens. I fell in love with it the very first time, and with Greece in general. I went back maybe a dozen times, until an Airbnb host told me to check out Halkida. That's where I bought my one and only apartment, and I spent six months there.

In 2022, when the borders opened, T. and I both went back to the Cayman Islands.

Two years later, in 2024, I started going to the humane society in Cayman to take a dog out for walks. One day the dog I usually walked wasn't there, and they recommended Tobi, who they thought would be a good fit. I took him for a walk, and I think I fell in love with him. I asked if I could keep him for a weekend, and that weekend turned out to be the last time he stayed at the shelter. From then on I fostered him, and I only made it official in May, right before moving back to Hungary.

To be continued...