Chapter 48 - Stuck for two weeks: special flight to Germany

I am a very impatient person, Celina can confirm that. The hard test was then of course, sitting in a motel room for more than 2 weeks without knowing when the waiting would end. 12 days our days were all the same. Although we all sat in one room, we spent them quite differently: Flori - as always - with Youtube, Celina became paranoid and checked the embassy's website every half hour and now knows every article that has ever been published about the repatriation; and I regularly read the arguments and fake news of other stranded people on Facebook and finished this travel diary.

It felt totally unreal when after 4 days of curfew and 6 days in the motel, the first repatriation flight from Auckland took off. Slowly we became confident that we would soon be able to go home, and the repatriation seemed less distant than a few days ago. After all, it had now become our only chance. In fact, it also became clear that a whopping 12,000!! Germans were stranded in New Zealand, of which about 100 were sitting with us in the motel. But on the same day came the disillusionment, because the New Zealand Prime Minister, (whose face we will probably never forget), put an end to the repatriation operation, as it violated the rules of the curfew. It should only continue when there was a solution for how the Germans could get from their place of residence to the airports, now that there were no more domestic flights.

This was followed by six tense days in which nothing changed in our situation. This dissatisfaction was particularly noticeable on Facebook, because suddenly there were only impatient questions, assumptions and speculations, questionable news and with each post a series of disputes broke out in the comments.

At first we were still happy to be staying near the large city park, but after walking around this overcrowded park every day for a week, we were tired of it as well. The three of us couldn't go for a walk together, so Celina and I only walked through the ghostly empty streets of Christchurch every day from then on. If someone did come towards us, they immediately crossed the street, and that didn't feel so great either. Every few days, Flori extended the motel and one of us bought the essentials, because we never knew how long we would still be staying. The other motel guests sat in front of their rooms day after day and were visibly bored.

On April 2nd there finally were some serious news: the repatriation operation would start again the next day, initially only from Auckland, and from the 6th also from Christchurch. Although nothing had really happened during all this time, it was finally decided that only those with a valid flight ticket could go to the vicinity of the airport, but we were just glad. The next few days we followed everything from other stranded people on Facebook, who were finally allowed to go home, and read about horror experiences, such as emails sometimes ending up in the spam folder, being turned off at night, and having to respond quickly, or one person getting a ticket, but not their spouse. Accordingly, we didn't sleep well. We were constantly afraid of missing the relieving email, regularly checked our mailbox, and looked at our phone every few hours when we woke up briefly.

After two weeks, our pain threshold had really been reached. In the morning of the 12th day, I received a confusing message from an untrustworthy email address, notifying me that something was already planned for us as part of the repatriation. In the afternoon, Celina finally received the best email ever: Air New Zealand sent the three of us flight tickets, and that right away for the next day. Finally, we had some luck and immediately got on the second plane from Christchurch. We were really happy!

The next morning, we left our motel room a little too early. A backpacker from the next room had left half an hour before us, and unfortunately, we felt like celebrities when we closed the door behind us and went to the reception with our luggage. A group of retirees at the other end of the motel stopped all conversations, greeted us, and waved goodbye, the German receptionist congratulated us on the way, and when checking out, we were allowed to go before other Germans. When the Chinese taxi driver loaded our luggage, the mouth of an older German couple dropped open, and they asked us about it. Then they kindly said goodbye to us with sad looks and walked on. It was terrible. We kept imagining how terribly envious we would have been if we had had to watch others go home after waiting so long.

At the airport, everything was very well organized. We had to go through several steps, do a rather lax health check, which we had feared the most, and even received free snacks and drinks because the shops were closed. Germany seemed to have rented the entire airport, and it still felt strange to fly home exclusively with Germans, even though we were so far away.

After waiting for another 2 hours, the orderly boarding started.

I hate flying. If it wasn't the only way to travel to interesting places, I would probably never get on an airplane. Every time I remind myself during the flight that underneath me there is nothing but air instead of roads or tracks, I would rather get off immediately, which would probably not be a good idea in that case. Besides, before New Zealand, I have never been on a plane for more than 3 hours. So, it was a real challenge to fly all the way to the other end of the world. Celina, on the other hand, loves flying, and Flori takes it as it comes. But even for flight professionals like Celina, the repatriation flight from Christchurch to Frankfurt was a big deal: once around half the world, 24 hours in the air and 27 hours non-stop on the plane. And then the flight route! I would really like to go to Hawaii at some point, but it would take a lot of effort. After all, the island is somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific. It's the same with Iceland. I really want to see Iceland, but flying over nothing but the sea for hours can only be worse than traveling overland. So, it was even stranger to be able to see from the flight map on our screens that we were flying over Tonga, Fiji, and the other mini islands where a few tourists were still stranded, who had definitely drawn the short straw. We continued over Hawaii, and for hours we had our first "night" just over water until we finally reached Vancouver after 13 hours. However, only the crew was changed, cleaned, and refueled there. We were neither allowed to get off nor to get up during the 2 hours. After this short stop, we continued over northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and the North Sea to Frankfurt. Unfortunately, we didn't have a window seat, but we were able to see a beautiful sunrise twice and over northern Canada we caught a glimpse of a single white snow area below us, which looked like how I imagine the Arctic to be.

The last two hours before landing, Celina and I counted down the minutes until we finally had German ground under our feet. We can't say otherwise, there is certainly something more pleasant than sitting in a fully occupied plane with very little freedom of movement for over a day. Nevertheless, the whole action seemed like a miracle to us.