Happy New Year to you and your families! I do hope that you had the chance to enjoy some family time these days.
In this note, I will briefly describe my Christmas experience trying to do some family outing. My family and I decided to travel to see our extended family, during Christmas. Before we begin our travelling, I had to do some Christmas shopping for the kids and for the house in order to have few things in place, when we return.
To be honest, going into shops during the pandemic and in a festive season wasn’t really easy. First, before entering each shop, I had to show my vaccination certificate and my ID. No problem with doing that, but it means that if you want to enter 10 shops you have to do the same movement 10 times. It was time consuming, as there were long queues for this reason. Also, I noticed that it wasn’t easy for many people to have a digital certificate and I do understand that. Which automatically means that the printed certificate, in most cases, couldn’t be scanned. So, the person who was checking the certificates had to try several times. Not to forget to mention, that I came across a lady, with a digital certificate, but the sun wasn’t allowing it to be scanned. What I mean is that, it was a sunny day and the sunbeams were coming through the glass door, so the sales assistant, who were checking the certificates had to find some darker place. I have to say, that all and the people concerned were amused with the situation. Christmas spirit is what it counts!
The other thing was, that card payments were difficult, as bank systems were overloaded (I guess), and many of us had to try several times to do the transactions until it goes through. We do want a Covid free situation, but paying in cash was easier and faster in most of the times.
In the meantime it was really nice being able to celebrate with family and go out with the kids. Of course, the main thing was and is to stay Covid free. We all were making our voluntary Covid tests at home, it became an everyday routine.
I do wish 2022 to be a pandemic free year. I am sure that all we can make this happen and we can go back to our lives, the ones that we didn’t have to wear masks, we could hug and kiss our loved ones, we could dance and listen to music; we could enter shops and travel without showing our vaccination certificates! So, cheers to a new happy, successful and healthier new year!
