In the fortnight (that’s two weeks in new money) since I last updated you about our forthcoming trip to Portugal, much has changed (or, to put it another way, nothing has). By the time this post reaches you, we will probably know no more than we do now. However, a week from now, I expect to be writing to you from…who knows where?

Let me try to explain. In mid-September, the Portuguese Government was reported in the media as having rescinded its previous decision to ban Israelis from entering the country. However, even now, no Portuguese Government website that I have been able to find states this explicitly. In addition, the decision was reported as being valid until the end of September, with the expectation that it would then be renewed.

As our planned trip on 4^th October grew nearer, Bernice and I grew more nervous. We sought reassurance that we would not be refused entry at Lisbon airport, or, alternatively, not be blocked from boarding the aircraft in Israel. However, I was unable to find any clear statement online. TAP’s site still linked, in its Covid update, to a statement from the Portuguese authorities from 2^nd September.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeking clarification through other channels. Not the Portuguese embassy in Tel Aviv, by the way. Their website has a helpful list of telephone numbers, all of which lead to a recorded message informing you that the embassy staff will only interact with Israeli citizens in face-to-face meetings. On the website, it is possible to book such an appointment, but I wasn’t able to, because I haven’t yet bought a diary for 2022 – the earliest available date.

I decided to try TAP, reasoning that they would know whether they are currently flying Israelis to Lisbon, and, if so, they would have surely noticed whether the Lisbon arrivals lounge was becoming clogged with Israelis all wandering around like Tom Hanks in The Terminal. So, I phoned their Help Desk on a Thursday – twice, actually: once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Or, more exactly, from 9 till 11:30 in the morning and then from 2:00 till 4:00 in the afternoon. Apart from devising a striking four-part harmony for the TAP call-waiting jingle, it was an unproductive day.

By the following Monday, I had recovered sufficiently to try again, and I actually got through to a living, breathing, English-speaking person. I kept my question nice and simple: ‘Can Israelis enter Portugal by air at the moment?’ I should have been alerted by the fact that the help-desk rep did not know the answer; instead, I was charmed by the fact that she said she would immediately find out, and asked me to hold. ‘Don’t hang up,’ she urged me. I assured her that that was the last thing I would do, having got this far.

After holding for around five minutes, I was surprised to hear a different voice beg me not to hang up. This voice then proceeded to ask me to participate in a brief survey about my satisfaction with the service I had received today. At this point, I realised I was listening to a recorded message.

Question 1 invited me to choose between tapping ‘1’ to indicate that I was satisfied with the service I had received, and ‘2’ to indicate that I was not. I decided not to answer, for two reasons. First, by tapping either number, I would have implied that I agreed that I had received service, whereas I felt that what I had received was a start, but it wasn’t really substantial enough yet to constitute service. My second piece of reasoning was that, if I kept the voice waiting for long enough, my rep might return to rescue me with an answer.

After telling me that my answer was inappropriate, the voice gave me just one more chance, then, without seeming to be at all perturbed by my lack of co-operation, it went on to Question 2: ‘Has the service you have received today resolved your problem?’ Again, both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ made me complicit in the charade that I had received service. So, again I abstained, and the system hung up on me in disgust.

Undeterred (shades of Robert the Bruce’s spider), I dialled again. This time, I was connected within three minutes. Another helpful rep asked me to hold while she found out the answer to my question. This time I immediately responded by asking her to write down my number, so that, if the system again hung up on me, she could call me back. She took my number and promised to do her best, but explained that the system feeds her another call as soon as her current call is terminated. I should have responded: ‘Well, then, I hope that a fire doesn’t break out in your office, because you will never be able to call the fire brigade.’ However, this was, sadly, l’esprit de l’escalier, and did not occur to me until I was retelling the story later for Bernice’s benefit.

This time, the rep returned before the surveyor could step in, and told me that Israelis were not allowed to fly to Portugal. At this point, it occurred to me to ask whether the rep was based in Lisbon, which she said she was. I found this reassuring: cocooned in an office block in downtown Lisbon, she obviously knew nothing about, and knew nobody who knew anything about, what was actually happening at the airport. I really needed to speak to someone from TAP in Tel Aviv, but, of course, there is no way to reach them.

So, another two days had passed, and we still had no clear proof that we were going to be able to get into Portugal. At this point, I whatsapped a friend who had been due to fly to the Azores from Israel. She was able to assure me that she and the entire group of Israelis she was travelling with had had no problem at the airport.

Sadly, when I checked the Portuguese government website again, I discovered that, indeed, the Azores had a much more lenient admissions policy that mainland Portugal.

At this point, I realised something interesting. As I seem to be mentioning with increasing frequency, while I am, by nature, somewhat Eeyorean, Bernice is considerably more Pigletish. This ought to have meant that she was optimistic about our chances, and I was not. However, in fact, she was really disturbed by the situation, and had great difficulty sleeping for a couple of nights. I, on the other hand, viewed the situation with more equanimity, as just another example of how things can turn out badly. Exactly as expected!

Throughout this period, Micha’el was assuring us that there were a number of Israelis in their area who had arrived in September by air from Israel without incident, and we, of course, found this heartening. It even calmed Piglet down.

At this point, I decided to contact my old friend Tal at the consular section of the Israeli embassy in Lisbon (see the post of two weeks ago) and ask whether she had heard back from the Portuguese authorities regarding our application to be considered as an exceptional case on the grounds of family reunification. At the same time, I asked whether she knew what the situation was for Israelis entering Portugal.

In her reply, which she sent within three hours, Tal told me that the situation was unchanged, and Israelis were only being allowed in for essential reasons. She also sent me the embassy’s own statement from their website explaining the situation.

This news caused Piglet to have a relapse, despite my brilliant deductive reasoning, which ran as follows. If Israelis were being turned back at Lisbon airport, at least some of them would have contacted the consular section of the embassy. If that had happened, Tal would not have quoted from the website, but would have told me that Israelis were actually being turned back. Therefore, since she had told me no such thing, it had to be true that Israelis were entering Portugal without incident. Elementary, my dear Piglet.

What finally calmed Bernice down again were screenshots from Micha’el and Esther. Micha’el sent us a facebook page answering a question from an Israeli in our position. The answer read that there were lots of Israelis at the airport with only an Israeli passport and no problems. Micha’el then followed that up with an excerpt from the TAP Covid guidelines stating that citizens of countries with whom the EU has reciprocal vaccination certificate recognition can enter mainland Portugal. Israel, we know, is such a country

Esther, meanwhile, forwarded us a link to a site that provides worldwide travel updates, and that also stated unequivocally that Israelis can enter Portugal. It is wonderful to have two children who are both finely attuned to the hysteria in our voices and who are so prepared to humour their angst-ridden parents.

So, while it is true to say that neither of us will actually breathe freely again until we can watch Lisbon airport receding in the rear-view mirror of our rental car, we are both feeling a lot calmer. Indeed, Bernice now feels relaxed enough to devote considerable attention to worrying herself sick over the fact that our luggage is going to be way overweight, which, of course, it is not. This, at least, feels like a traditional pattern of our last 49 years together.

[A couple of quick updates on Sunday afternoon.

Now that we have packed, even Bernice is convinced that we are comfortably underweight (at least our cases are).

We also both received negative test results today, so that’s one more obstacle removed.

Finally, at 6AM today, I saw sense, suddenly realising that driving from the airport immediately on landing makes no sense, both because of the strain and stress it places on the driver and, even more so, the passenger, and also because Micha’el will have to wait up for us, even though we have a key, because their puppy, though lovely and sweet-natured, is nevertheless a guard-dog, and has never met us. She possibly wouldn’t take a chunk out of my leg, but she would probably wake the entire street at 2AM with her barking.

So, by 6:10AM I had booked us a room in a modest airport hotel. We can now drive, in daylight, after a good night’s sleep, and probably arrive at the house only an hour or two after we would have woken up had we arrived there in the middle of the night. I can’t tell you how relieved Piglet is that good sense has prevailed.]

Have there been moments in the last stressful weeks when we have wondered whether the game is worth the candle? See below, and then you tell me!