Pre-13 March - Wedding preparations

Our Swiss visitors thoroughly enjoyed Perth during the first two weeks, making the most of cycling paths, easy access to beaches, the sun and the warmth. We were all having a wonderful time, enjoying ourselves, talking, laughing, eating and drinking on our balcony, overlooking a leafy Perth suburb, enjoying beautiful sunsets. Work and the news kept us up-to-date with COVID-19 developments, as the whole of Italy entered a lock-down, something unheard of or never imagined possible. It concerned us, but it seemed so far away to hardly impact our upcoming trip to Bali. We started getting excited for our wedding. As the day started approaching, the "toilet-paper mania" hit, when Australians country-wide suddenly stripped shopping centres empty of their supply of such paper. At the same time more countries started imposing travel restrictions, with the USA closing its borders for anyone coming from the Continent. Australia did shut its borders to anyone coming from Italy, but little other restrictions were in place from the government with regards to overseas travels. Bali was still at its usual high level of risk, due to terrorist attacks, rather than COVID-19 worries. The week-end prior to our departure to Bali was supposed to be a family gathering and an opportunity to meet the in-laws. Regrettably, due to harsher restrictions by some child-care centres, this had to be cancelled as any contact with someone travelling from Italy would have meant a quarantining of the youngest one in the family from his kindi. One of COVID-19's tentacles just hit... Prior to the last day of leave, one of us 2 travelling lads was informed there might be a possibility of needing to go into self-isolation upon returning from Bali. The laptop was part of our holiday equipment anyhow, it didn't raise any major concerns. As people and the government started contemplating restrictions on major gatherings but without making any official recommendation yet, we did receive 2 phone calls from the restaurant, following up on our reservation of 12, with the caller seeming very relieved we re-confirmed our presence. Friday March 13th, 2020 came! The wedding!

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