Patrik Naindenel

I am right now in Tucson Arizona and it is nice to be here, but the organisation to be able to do so was a really hard work.

We have a customer who have asked us to visit since 3 month, but with the corona crisis around the world it is not that simple. Specially as I live in a country that’s on the US list. To enter USA you will need to stay in quarantine for 14 days.

My colleague and I came up with a quick idea to do so.

That was that we travel to Barbados and stay there for 14 days. Perfect as from Barbados to USA no quarantine would be needed… Who would not like to sit in quarantine on Barbados? I wouldn’t mind if I say so.

As we have home office we would be able to work as normal. So no problem there either.

Anyhow our management saw a big problem with this because, how to explain to the upper management why we are sitting on Barbados for 2 weeks!! 

As they did not like to explain this. They contacted a US emigration layer for suggestions instead (wonder what that costed). The emigration layer come up with the idea that we could visit under the National Interest Exemption regulations.

Letters had to be written to explaining why. This took sometime as you can imagine. When we had everything ready it was sent to the US Embassy including copy of passport, visa etc.

Came back was 10 questions which would need some easy and some difficulty answers

Then came the info that I needed to send a copy of birth certificate and passport.

OK next problem to get hold of a new birth certificate I needed to contact Swedish authorities.

When it finally arrived, I send it to the US embassy. A day later I hade an OK and could travel..

Then came the next hurdle. I needed a Covid-19 PCR test…hmmmm. I though that would be easy, As wrong I was. The problem is that the test must be less than 72 hours when arriving USA.

I learned that most laboratory’s was so occupied that I should count 72 hours before I could receive the result. It was only to call around asking. Finally I found a test center who told me, they could ask the laboratory to do it as express, but without promises.

I booked a time with this info and in the end I had my answers after 24 hours. I was negative which was positive. The day after I received my result, off I went.

The flight from Zurich to San Francisco went perfect and on a plane with space of 300+ passengers we where max 30 persons, more or less everyone had its on toilet.

When arriving emigration in San Francisco I was a little worried, would they as well accepted all paperwork. The result was good and I have never before been able to come through emigration quicker (it took maximum 5 minutes then I was out).

On to next plane and in Tucson my colleague from the Netherland was already waiting.

We said hello quick and went to pick up our rental car, then drove to our hotel.

In the end it was a 27 hour trip which was over. tired as we were we had a beer and then it was time from bed.