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Continuation of this post.

Forty-four hours of travelling, in total, from Rosario to Rome, by pullman, by plane, and by train. With 40 kilos of books and papers.

I had a flight for Rome that was programmed to take off from Ezeiza, the International airport of Buenos Aires, on April 13th, but I decided to take the one organized by the Italian government for March 23th, a special flight set up to bring back home Italian citizens abroad, before a complete shut down of international flights from Argentina to our country. There were no flights from Rosario, my city, to Buenos Aires, though, but I managed to find a company that organizes transportations by pullman from one city to the other, in Argentina: Tienda Leon.

So, on March 22nd, I moved to Ezeiza where I waited several hours before sitting on my chair, on a brand new Boeing 787 bearing the colours of the Italian company Neos.

While at the airport, I met most of the Italians that were going to get the same flight, all wearing their masks. Some of them with some very fancy models, that made them look like a Star Wars character. I was there, well aware that I was going far beyond the limit set by my disease. I had to lay down continuously and I could see how frail I was in comparison with the other passengers waiting for the flight. No one knew how sick I was, I told nobody. No one knew that I have been living in my bedroom for most of the last 20 years. And that this was the very first long travel abroad for me.

I have just received the notification that my flight for April 13th has been cancelled, so my choice to come back as soon as possible has been a wise one. I took that decision also because of the advice from the diplomatic offices of the Italian Consulate in Rosario.

A friend has crafted the picture above, not knowing how much Indiana Jones has meant for me when I was a teenager. But, even though an appealing adventure, the tragedy behind it is real, it is not a movie. Once in Milan, I could start seeing the effects of the pandemic in the eyes of the staff of the airport of Malpensa: the fear and the concern. Then I moved from Milan to Fiumicino, where I found a train for Rome, my city. A city that I left two and a half months ago full of life and noise, now empty as in a dream.