We wanted to maintain a fair bit of flexibility in our travels so we had booked our little Sarajevo apartment for 3 x 10 day blocks (27-7 March, 7-17 March, 17-27 March) and by 11 March or so we were starting to get mildly concerned about our travels after Bosnia - supposed to go via car to Tivat, Montenegro on 27 March then onwards to Dubrovnik on 13 April and then fly to Ireland on 7 May for a housesit... for a couple visiting their daughters in the USA... that was the plan. But as I said, about 11 March we were starting to get concerned. Plan A was continue on as planned. Plan B was to cancel Tivat and Dubrovnik and stay in Sarajevo. Plan C was 'what if' things go sour - do we want to be stuck in Sarajevo with dwindling supplies in the supermarkets and an inadequate health system (the Bosnians had to start panic buying eventually - even at that point we we getting a bit worried about borders - heaven forbid the car couldn't go into Montenegro...) Well on Friday 13 March we came to Plan D for 'Damn' (of course it was a Friday 13th), Montenegro did close 3 of its 5 or so borders with Bosnia - but hey - let's not get unduly anxious here - one border was closed for roadworks and there were still 2-3 borders operational... followed by Plan E on the weekend - E for Eeeek - Croatia said a 14 day quarantine for anyone coming in. Meanwhile Serbia was closing borders with Bosnia. Plan F happened on Sunday when, having already considered hitting the very long road back to New Zealand (for a possible, unconfirmed, 2-3 month housesit on 55 acres or maybe a campervan) or Australia, we decided 'F for f**k it' and said let's fly to Dublin, Ireland as soon as we can, get an el cheapo AirBnB for the month - at least everyone speaks English and we will know what's happening sooner rather than later. This was a major concern as the English news in Sarajevo was about 12 hours behind the local news - and that's equivalent to a week in CVT (coronavirus time). So out came the credit card, kicking and screaming, and Sunday evening we booked a flight from Sarajevo to Istanbul to Dublin for Tuesday 17 March - obviously we'd need a day to pack...

Monday dawned (packing day for Plan F), we woke up to find the news had caught up to us and Montenegro had closed all borders with Bosnia. Later that morning after the meeting of the Bosnian presidency, they declared a State of Emergency, late Monday afternoon the EU commissioner proposed that Europe shut its border to non-EU citizens and residents for 30 days. Right. So we could land in Istanbul to the possibility that we wouldn't be able to board the plane to Dublin and would be stranded pending more new airfares to get out of Istanbul. So that put the kibosh on Plan F (and of course the Irish housesit starting in May was cancelled as they can't travel to the USA). Suffice it to say... we went to Plan G - for Get the Hell out of Dodge and also 'Gold Coast!'. We hadn't heard back from the kiwi housesit possibility (still moving on island time), so we flipped a coin and said Gold Coast it is, cancelled the Turkish flights and seemingly bought a 5% stake in Qatar Airways to get on a flight leaving Sarajevo at midday on Tuesday. The airport was still open - but it was starting to look dicey and flights were down to 4-5 a day with only a couple going to a major hub like Istanbul or Doha.

During all this, the only way to describe it was playing chess (which I don't), against multiple other players (who do), on a chess board hanging vertically in the air with all the chess pieces falling off. We had to simultaneously make moves, watch the rest of the worlds' moves and catch the pieces as they fell off. For the first time in 7 years we actually wished we had a shed with a bed somewhere in the world that we could head to.

There is a saying, Home is where, when you have to go, they have to take you in. We should have been alright going to New Zealand as they were letting in kiwis and spouses, but we knew we were definitely alright going to Australia - both of us being citizens. We packed like wild things on Monday afternoon since the flight to Doha was leaving 8 hours earlier than our original flight booked to Istanbul. We ended up going to bed at 2 am on Tuesday, got up at 6 am and left for the airport at 8 am. Our wonderful apartment owner was in a contained (but still obvious) tizzy and he was very happy indeed to get us to the airport and see that it was open. He did say that if we couldn't get on the plane for any reason - he'd come back and get us - superb Bosnian hospitality.

We walked into Sarajevo airport and it was a ghost town. We thought there would be a few more people around with 5 flights out - but there you have it. We were ecstatic to see our incoming plane was on time and our outgoing flight was operating as scheduled. We figure it was operating at about 10% capacity and one of the Qatar ground crew said it was unlikely they'd be flying much longer as they only had a total of 50 bookings for the following week. (Update - Qatar's last flight out for 6 weeks was on Friday 20th... Turkish still flying at this stage... Sarajevo turning right in on itself.)

We had a great 5 hour flight to Doha (turns out Scott Morrison, the Australian PM issued a 'Level 4' travel warning when we were in the air for about 2 hours - all aussies come home - the rest of the world had been added to the Do Not Travel list). After a short layover in Doha we started the big one (that's us pictured above) - 13+ hours to Adelaide, another short layover and then a final couple of hours up to Brisbane, followed by 90 minutes odd to get to the Gold Coast. With our heads spinning we hit the sack. We've got 14 days in self-isolation - hopefully enough time for the spinning to stop.

What a horrendous year this past week has been.