Why is nobody discussing this here? The EU has banned U.S. citizens from entering its countries.

[CTyankee]

https://www.nytimes.com/article/eu-travel-ban-explained-usa.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

As a regular visitor to countries in the EU for over 10 years a while back, I am appalled that this has happened, but I understand it and don't blame them for doing it.

I think so fondly of all the wonderful museums I visited, the people I met, the food I experienced and I am so very sorry for those students, retirees, or just anybody wanting to move through European countries, using its fantastic trains, and experiencing life enhancing times.

Could this have been avoided? I would say yes, if we had another president, say, Hillary Clinton, who would have seen to it that the coronavirus was her top priority to protect all of us.

This is a cultural disaster for us and what a stain of disgrace! I am angry and sad for my country!

[sarcasmo]

1. Like a horror movie, we will all be trapped in a Shithole country.

[RKP5637]

16. It really is! Like a Stephen King novel/movie. And "ZERO" confidence in the current leadership of

the US. Sadly the way it's being handled, it well might be a Shithole country for a long time after this is over.

[lunasun]

30. + feels like it could go down like that. Stay Away USA!

[CurtEastPoint]

2. For 15 years I have been going at least once, sometimes twice a year and I MISS IT!

I get it. I'm not mad at them. If anything this just reminds me of how Europe is so far ahead of us in so many ways.

[CTyankee]

14. I remember in particular those nice trains I took from town to town in Belgium a few years back.

Ghent, Bruges and Brussels were our main focus. I saw the Ghent Altarpiece and the Bruges Madonna one day on a liesurely trip from Brussels, where we were staying. I loved Brussels, visited their museums and walked through their fabulous streets eating waffles dusted with powdered sugar, like everybody else did.

The trains we took were fabulous and we could walk from stations to our sites.

Sad, isn't it?

[RKP5637]

19. The US is in may respects a backward place. And the decay in much of the US ... some places really

look like/are 3rd world countries. I used to work in Germany and France. Just the trains make the US look so backward.

[flibbitygiblets]

29. I've been on those same trains many times!

omg Bruges makes my heart go pitter patter. And Brussels, ahhhhhh.

And those street waffles!!! I don't remember powdered sugar as much as a kind of burnt on molasses? Damm they were amazing

[CTyankee]

40. I remember seeing happy Japanese tourists munching on them!

Did you see the Bruges Madonna while you were there? It is the only sculpture Michelangelo made outside of Italy and was commissioned by the city elders.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. It may have been mentioned, but got absorbed into the morass of general...

news abut the DC doings.

I noticed because I hope to make a few more trips over there, bucket list and all... But, this too shall pass.

[Eliot Rosewater]

4. WE are overwhelmed with crimes, mass murder of our citizens by the GOP and traitor

changing laws so you can slaughter baby bears, shoot animals from airplanes...

All protection of environment gone...

All water and air completely destroyed...

DOJ which is a criminal operation and very dangerous to patriots...

We cant keep up with the news, it is all bad, it is all crime and we are just barely able to survive the virus, maybe.

GOP and supporters WANT this outcome...

[RKP5637]

21. Extremely well said and reality, as always, in your postings/replies!!! n/t

[Eliot Rosewater]

25. Thanks, the reason I seem to use hyperbole is to make the point that

it really is or will soon be as bad as I say and we wont be able to fix it if we allow it to go too far.

We did.

It is too far now.

[kimbutgar]

5. I'm also pissed

I wanted to go in the fall to Europe and now those plans are DOA.

We are now a shithole country and pariah to the world because of MF45’s bumbling of the pandemic. It was bad enough when he insulted leaders of NATO and now we’re even more of an embarrassment.

And I wonder about those rich repuke who like to go to Europe, shopping, and on cruises, or to their villas in the south of France etc. they have to stay here now and wallow in COVID-19 USA.

[CTyankee]

15. My daughter and I were planning a trip to Madrid and Barcelona in late fall.

It would have been a fabulous trip. I never got to Barcelona when I was in Spain a few years ago. I thought "Oh well, I can go later."

Shit!

[kimbutgar]

28. Yes we went on a cruise last year that left from Barcelona and were planning on taking

Another cruise to visit Barcelona and Madrid. But luckily when we were starting the process of booking the virus hit and we held back. I’m glad we did so we didn’t lose our deposit.

And I also wanted to go back to my favorite place Venice.

[mnhtnbb]

42. I was in Barcelona for the first time two years ago this summer.

Been going to Europe for 30 years and had never been to any part of Spain. I booked a cruise beginning in Barcelona and added on a couple of extra days. My timing was AWFUL as I hit the two days taxis were on strike!

But what a gorgeous city. I'd like to go back, but I doubt that will happen now.

Fall would be a good time to go. It was really hot. Too hot in the summer.

[Phoenix61]

6. The Pentagon has Florida on the no travel

list for military. We are officially a banana republic.

[left-of-center2012]

7. When you say 'nobody', I guess you missed ...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213677070


Tue Jun 30, 2020, 07:47 AM

[CTyankee]

18. Oh, hell, I did!

Thanks for posting. I guess I was out to lunch that day...

[Tipperary]

24. Yeah, I have seen a few.

[lunasun]

8. We stopped flights too

With specific exceptions, foreign nationals who have been in any of the following countries during the past 14 days may not enter the United States. For a full list of exceptions, please refer to the relevant proclamations in the links below.

China
Iran
European Schengen areaexternal icon (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City)
United Kingdomexternal icon (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
Republic of Ireland
Brazil

[Quixote1818]

9. Ironic full circle for the Trump Admin. nt

[tblue37]

10. So has one Mexican state:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213695092

[leftieNanner]

11. My husband and I have been planning to live in Europe for a year at some point in the next few years

We would rent out our house here in the US and spend 3-4 months in 3-4 different cities. We have discussed Paris, Vienna, Seville, maybe London, or Sienna.

Now that's all on hold. We can barely even leave our own home, let alone travel to the EU. And who knows when we will see our two daughters again (one in NYC and one in Boulder, CO)!

[Stinky The Clown]

12. I agree, some of my very dearest friends are there. We were going to do our annual gathering . . . .

. . . . . in Berlin this year. Not any more.

[LakeArenal]

13. Yeah! And using this virus as the excuse!!

sarcasm thingie.

[central scrutinizer]

17. Vectors

Americans are the equivalent of mosquitoes and ticks.

[Celerity]

20. I post on it all the time as I live in the EU. I think it is a good call by us. I live in Sweden and

although we have had a huge tragedy amongst the elderly, we have nothing raging out of control like many areas of the US have going on now, and we also are a far smaller (a little over 10 million) nation population-wise, so it isn't like we have 330 million potential spreaders (or more, counting the undocumented) and we also can be impacted by infected Americans to a higher degree based off sheer volume of traffic form the US. We just extended the band on american coming here until September,although there are exceptions (such as people slated to moved here already or people with reasons to be allowed in for medical employment here.)

Trump and the Rethugs have turned the US into a global pariah.

[RicROC]

22. The Wall that Trump built

Who knew that Trump would be building a wall such that Americans could not escape the US? we can't travel to Canada, and now we can't travel to the EU. Oh, tomorrow the border between Arizona and Mexico will be closed (from the US to the Mexico).

This 'wall' is keep us IN, not keeping people out.

[bdamomma]

35. He is making Americans his prisoners

but prisoners usually up-rise don't they??? just sayin.

Welcome to DU

[Tipperary]

23. I have seen threads here on this topic.

It was a few days ago when it happened.

[2naSalit]

27. It was all the rage for a couple hours...

But that was so last Tuesday, we're on to the outrage of Mt. Rushmore today.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. Here's what I've been saying to people.

Pretend it's early 1939, and you and I are planning a fabulous trip to Europe next summer. We're going to do Spain, London, Rome, Madrid, and various places in between. We can hardly wait.

Then September rolls around. WWII starts. We aren't going to Europe next year -- who knows when we will finally get to go? Turns out to be years. We finally make that trip in the summer of 1946, and the entire continent is different.

That's what we're up against here. Whether or not this could have been successfully contained, strikes me as a bit of a minor point. A lot of things are going to change drastically. It's going to be years before this is over, if it ever really is.

I love to travel myself, and so far this year there are at least three different trips I would have taken by now, and another two or three later on. Instead I'm home, like a lot of people. I keep on trying to think what kind of travel I will do when someday it feels safe to do so.

And all of my planned trips were within this country. One would have been a train trip, the others I'd haven driven.

So now pretend it's July, 1944. D-Day has happened. We know that the good guys are going to win this war. We just don't know how long it will take. Every time we talk about our long-ago planned trip we say wistfully to each other, "Next year. Next year."

[CTyankee]

32. Ah, but you are probably not as old as I am. Not that I am decrepit, I'm not and I do not look

my age. Still, I think of the years I have left and they are shrinking...

Then, there's the little problem with our passports which had expired so we merrily sent them off to the State Dept. for renewal. Hah! Another gotcha!. The government shut down and our passports are somewhere in the fog of Foggy Bottom. What used to take 4 to 6 weeks is now "just anybody's guess."

And we were very careful and had the P.O. workers show us the exact way to send the passports in for renewal.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

36. I'm 71.

And glad I last renewed my passport in 2015. Still have five years left on it. I also got the passport card then, which I always have with me.

[CTyankee]

39. Lucky you!

I wish I had taken more care and gotten this done much earlier. Of course, I never anticipated the kind of situation we have now!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

44. Well, to be fair, you had know way of knowing back in, say, January,

that things would shut down like this.

I can tell you that my personal experience with passports, and I've had them be processed in well under the supposed length of time it would take. Don't know if I've always been unusually lucky in that regard, of if in normal times it simply never takes that long.

Over the years I've had a total of five passports. The first two were good for five years, then they went to ten year passports. At times I've let several years pass between one expiring and acquiring the next one. However, I plan to always have a valid passport from now on.

[CTyankee]

51. I was unfortunate enough to have my passport stolen in northern Italy.

I of course reported the theft (I forget what city I was in, but somewhere I have the report from the police dept. all written in Italian) and took a little train to Milan to get an emergency replacement from the U.S. Consulate there). The only good thing was, while I waited, I was able to visit La Scala and see part of a rehearsal for an upcoming opera).

So that cost me $110. Then i went thru the whole process of getting another passport.

[sinkingfeeling]

33. It's too depressing to talk about. I'm still hoping New Zealand will

let me come two weeks early and self-quarintine, but it's a slim hope

[bdamomma]

34. we are truly

the "ugly"/ "sick" Americans.

So sad for my country...........we need to get him out NOW.

[JmAln]

37. It's almost the 4th of July,

and I'm again ashamed to be an American. The GOP leadership of this country has completely failed us.

[wnylib]

38. Sad that we are so decrepit now

in comparison to other nations.

OTOH, although it would be great to be able to visit Europe, who wants to risk getting on a plane?

[panader0]

41. I live 15 miles from Mexico in SE Az. The Mexicans have banned travel from here.

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have banned travelers from states with high
metrics of covid. These are strange days indeed. I have a new granddaughter in Virginia
but probably won't be able to hold her for a year. My brother is in a home (dementia) in
Tucson and I can't visit. My county is exploding with new cases. I rarely leave my land.
Yes, a stain of disgrace.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

45. New Mexico is now requiring fourteen day

isolation of self-quarantine for out of state visitors. In reality, that will be difficult to enforce.

[panader0]

47. We travel from Az to Texas about once a year to visit Jeannie's people.

We usually stay in Albuquerque overnight as we are getting too old to drive straight through anymore.
Will we need to drive through now?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

48. I suspect that if you are only staying overnight

in ABQ there's no problem. If you want to visit here, forget going to whatever museums or tourist spots are actually open. At least not for fourteen days. Although, as already noted, it would be difficult at best to enforce.

People in my part of NM, Santa Fe, are mostly being very good about wearing masks.

[mnhtnbb]

43. I believe we are experiencing a paradigm shift in the way we live our lives.

A lot of us on DU are retired and lucky enough to have the means to travel.

Since my husband died and our house was sold I have been in flux about where and how I wanted to live out the rest of my life. Part of me was really attracted to the idea of living abroad in Europe--especially after Trump was turning out to be the disaster that we knew he'd be--but I wanted to spend a couple of months each living in France or Italy or Spain before making that decision. I was held back from going because of my elderly dog. Last November--she was still going strong while I was creeping closer to 70--I made the decision to give up the idea of trying out life abroad, give up the idea of buying a small house or condo here in The Triangle area, and give up the idea of moving elsewhere in NC. Instead, I moved upstairs to a terrific view in my high rise apartment in downtown Raleigh where I could walk to the ballet, the symphony, great restaurants, and be close to the train station for trips up/down the east coast (I hate flying) and still near the airport for trips to the Caribbean.

In March I cut my 2 week trip to Bonaire short and came home a week early due to concerns the airport would close there and I'd be stuck because of the coronavirus. As March progressed, and it became apparent this was a deadly virus with potentially serious long term health consequences--if it didn't kill you--I began to realize it was going to shoot down my whole plan for the rest of my life.

Without therapeutic treatment options to prevent the damage to vital organs and a vaccine, all of a sudden it meant a big shift in how I lived. No more sitting in theaters next to people for a couple of hours, no more going out to crowded restaurants, no more travel. All of a sudden everything that was a reason for living downtown for me was gone! So, I made a decision: to get myself a little house with a small garden where I could enjoy being alone outside among plants and flowers and hang my hummingbird feeder for 6 months of the year.

So, I plunked my $$ down on a lot in a small over 55 development that is being built and I hope to see my house finished and ready to move into by the end of this year.

It was the coronavirus that changed my mind and the completely incompetent way it was handled by this regime. I think we are all going to be living differently for several years--until there is therapeutic treatment to prevent the serious complications in patients that are filling our ICU's and/or a vaccine. I don't see the vaccine happening for at least a couple of years. All the talk about this fall or within a year is wishful thinking. And I wouldn't be quick to get a vaccine, either, if they do come up with one quickly. Do you really want to trust Big Pharma on this? I don't.

It makes me very sad to think I probably won't get to spend my 70th birthday on Bonaire next year, or go to London or France again, or even spend a long weekend in NY going to museums and the theatre. I'm going to content myself with puttering among the plants and flowers of my little courtyard for the next few years.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

50. Thank you for your thoughtful and informative post.

I'm one of the older, retired people here on DU. On March 1st I took a cruise to Hawaii on Holland America, and every day I am more and more glad I did so. I'm pretty sure some percentage of people who were booked cancelled.

The cruise left from San Diego. Five days at sea, then five days around the Islands, then five days at see coming back. We all felt incredibly safe and protected on board the ship. There were only two small glitches connected to Covid-19. One was a switch in ports at Maui, apparently because there was a rumor about someone on the previous cruise having tested positive. The other was that our final stop in Ensenada, Mexico happened but we were not allowed to disembark. I'm not sure whether it was the Mexican government or the cruise line that didn't want us to. Not important.

That was a cruise that was my 70th birthday present to myself, and was delayed by a year and a half because of various things. I did put down a deposit on a cruise next spring, which I doubt I'll be taking.

As you've said, a lot of things are going to be very different in our lives for the next few years, and in some cases permanently. I would have taken several other trips already this year. I have no idea when I'll travel again. Fortunately I'm financially secure. In fact, I'm saving money because of no trips and far less going out here at home. Lucky me.

[marie999]

46. If I could take my family to Europe,

it would be a one-way trip.

[SiliconValley_Dem]

49. same here! I've walked the streets of Amsterdam, London, Paris, Hamburg

Rome, Copenhagen, Florence, Venice--now they are temporarily beyond my reach