7 ways to travel in times of corona

These corona times are tougher for some than for others. We can imagine that stay-at-home kind of couch potatoes with an unhealthy Netflix addiction content themselves with some extra time to binge. Others, whose feet get itchy when they remain too long in one place, might be more hard-hit by the instruction to stay at home. For all of those with a serious fit of Fernweh, an ache for distant places, we present our tips on how to travel in times of corona, quarantine and social distancing.

1/ Make walks around the neighbourhood

This corona crisis meddled with lots of our plans to explore Belgium. We wanted to continue the long-distance trail GR5A towards the seaside, a hike we started when we moved to Antwerp. We also wanted to go cycling between the fruit tree blooms in rural Haspengouw, and see the bluebells bloom in the forest. All of that is off the table, for now.

The measures still allow people to walk or cycle around their own neighbourhood. “It’s a great opportunity to explore those forgotten gems in the streets around your house”, said virologist Steven Van Gucht. So that’s exactly what we did: we stepped out of our front door and started walking.

Anete was curious about a neighbourhood called Luchtbal (Air Ball), deeming it something from Pokemon, that’s where we went first, through Colombia Street, Venezuela Street, Honduras Street, past Manchester, Dublin, Boston and Houston. It felt like a trip around the world. And we did spot some blooms after all.

Over the bridge we slouched towards Merksem, into suburbia, walking through streets named after birds. Flamingo, grey-winged trumpeter, kingfisher. We ended up at one of those star-shaped ornaments on the map that made Anete curious, one of the many forts that formed the defence line of Antwerp and long-gone times. By the time we reached home, we had hiked 20 kilometres without ever leaving Antwerp.

Disclaimer: when you go out to walk or cycle, please stay vigilant. The point is to stretch your legs, not to recreate Laulupidu in your local forest. Don’t take a car to go hike elsewhere, stay in your neighbourhood. Only walk or cycle in the company of your housemates and try to keep a distance from other people. And listen to your local government’s recommendations.

2/ Make a culinary trip around the world

Our home is a wildly diverse place. Only Amsterdam has more nationalities than Antwerp, or so it was revealed a few years ago. Which also means that this city with half a million people is home to more nationalities than London or New York. Big Apple? Ha, more like Little Apple. Of course, entrepreneurial Antwerpians, never satisfied with second-best (and especially not behind those bloody Dutch), immediately made plans to swap a few Ghanaians with the one Micronesian living in Leuven. They also started a crowd-funding campaign to pay for the plane ticket of a Samoan.

Where I’m getting at: all those people have brought little parts of their home country to Antwerp. And whilst it’s not possible to eat out at the many ethnic restaurants, the shops are still full of products from all over the world. We often pop into Asian, Polish, Turkish or Moroccan shops. There are also a plethora of African, Balkan, and Romanian shops available, and even one from the UK! And they’re pretty well-stocked. When our Latvian friend Georgijs came to visit, he found the Korean rice wine makgeolli he used to drink, mixed with Sprite, when he lived with a bunch of Koreans.

There is no reason not to travel around the world from the comforts of your dinner table. Since the start of the lockdown in Belgium, we’ve eaten pierogis with smetana in a milk bar in Gdansk, drank freshly pressed orange juice and sweet mint tea in a street-side café in Tangiers, devoured quesadilla’s in a cantina in Mérida, all without leaving our living room. Even people who live in smaller places should be able to get creative with what they find in the world section of their local supermarket.

3/ Get drunk around the globe

Whenever we travel somewhere, we usually bring home a bottle (or two) of the local spirit. Cognac from Armenia, cachaça from Brazil, bison grass vodka from Poland, Vana Tallinn from Estonia, or Riga Balsem from Latvia: the possibilities are endless.

When we returned from Mexico last year, we carried two bottles home, one with tequila and one with mezcal. A Mexican saying goes, “For everything bad, mezcal, and for everything good, as well.” This seems especially appropriate in times of social isolation when life can seem desperate but we have to stay positive and celebrate the little joys.

These are mezcalitas, cocktails made with fresh orange and lime juice. According to Cookie and Kate, the culinary blog from which we stole this recipe, mezcalitas are “fun like margaritas, but smoky, spicy and more mysterious.” Does that make us happy? Claro que sí!

4/ Read (or listen/watch)

In the wisdom of books, you can find never-ending amounts of worlds. I’ll just give the example of the last three books I’ve finished. Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito focused heavily on Laos, Jared Diamond’s Upheaval brought me to Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Australia and the USA, and in Lucia Berlin’s Evening in Paradise, I took a train in Chile and a flight to Panama, breathed in the atmosphere of a seaside hotel in Mexico and made stops in Albuquerque and rural New Mexico. Anete recently finished a book set in London, Libby Page’s Lido, and is reading Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, set in Mexico City now. That’s the power of good writing, acting as a paper teleport machine.

Those who don’t like reading (what are you doing here??) might try a film that transports them to a different place and/or time. Think about those famous spaghetti westerns, or more contemporary movies like Roma, set in Mexico City, or Tõde ja õigus (Truth and Justice), which shows the Estonian countryside life in the 19^th century. Films we recently watched also took us to Australia (Walkabout) and Korea (Parasite). Chernobyl transported us to Soviet Ukraine, whereas the awesome New Mexican landscapes of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul never fail to make us dream about red deserts and cacti. Even music can be a trip. I like to put on gamelan whenever I miss Indonesia, but you could also listen to African desert blues, or even Estonian rap music. I don’t recommend the latter though.

5/ Look through your window

It might not rival a birdwatching tour through the interior jungles of Honduras, but it’s still worth to look out of the window to spot some feathered friends and listen to their twittering. Now is the time birds get most active, so enjoy your backyard to the fullest if you have one. If, like us, you live in a city, you might have to be happy with the few visiting pigeons. Luckily, from our kitchen on the third floor, we can watch the neighbourhood cats making their routes over backyard walls and roofs, through gardens and over fences.

People-watching is another typical holiday activity you may as well do from your home. Granted, there are few people on the streets (although the many orthodox Jews in our neighbourhood don’t seem to be too bothered by the coronavirus), but we’ve had an excellent view of our neighbours enjoying sunny days in their gardens and on their balconies. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, you can lift your head upwards. We’ve been enjoying some exceptionally clear night skies, with the crescent moon accompanied by a brightly-lit Venus. On April 7, keep your eyes open for the year’s biggest super moon. Magic’s everywhere you look for it.

6/ Travel virtually from your couch

Thanks to the internet, you can learn about any place in the world whilst sitting behind your desk. But you can do more than just learn about them, you can actually discover them. When I get nostalgic for Indonesia, for example, I like to steer my virtual motorbike over the jalan tikus, rat runnings, that I used to take on my way home in Yogyakarta. National Geographic shared a few travel experiences you can have from home. You can visit museums or attend concerts. On live streams, you can watch orange poppies bloom in Antelope Valley, California, or cherry trees blossom in Washington. It may sound like ‘watching paint dry’, but it’s definitely more beautiful.

7/ Save up and dream about future destinations

You can’t go out and splash the cash in restaurants, leave a small fortune in pubs and clubs or drink fancy coffee whilst you could have made a cup of Joe at home. No more clothes shopping, eating out for lunch, going to concerts and football games, or paying for gym memberships that you don’t even use. Soon, you’ll have saved so much money that you can take a proper trip when all of this is over. Now is a perfect time to start dreaming about the destinations you want to visit when the government takes away the leash.

How do you keep yourselves entertained during this corona quarantine?