Tere!

Recently we have heard of the news regarding new type of coronavirus called COVID-19 in a daily basis. It was started from China and the infected patients have been found in Japan and a lot in South Korea too. In the Middle East Iran was highlighted and in Europe Italy became the first risky country. In Estonia more and more people have been infected day by day.

I was supposed to go to Stockholm, Sweden for last weekend (from the 13th to the 15th of March) for Louis Tomlinson’s live concert, who is one of One Direction’s members. However, since I got an information about the concert, the situation in whole Europe has been drastically changing owing to COVID-19. 

In Japan it’s also alarmed that people shouldn’t believe information with no grounds about COVID-19 so although this article is related to COVID-19, I just summarise what has personally affected me in Estonia, which does not treat the Estonian government’s announcement or such.

This is, again, really personal but some of you might be curious and get some advice when being the similar situation in the future. This article is written in the order of time sequences and will be added when something happened to the end of the article. (No worries, this is not serious at all. Just enjoy like reading someone’s secret diary.)

1) 12th March A.M.

★The concert postponed

On the 12th of March, while I was working, I got an email on my personal email account from Swedish ticketmaster, where it was said that Louis Tomlinson’s concert for last Saturday was postponed due to the Swedish government’s announcement regarding COVID-19. 

I, to be honest, didn’t know the situation in Sweden in terms of COVID-19 at that time but soon after that many events were cancelled or postponed in Estonia too. (I was super looking forward to the concert and worked for the concert so I was super disappointed.)

In Sweden, in addition to the concert, business conferences and movie theatres and other gathering spaces were all cancelled, postponed or closed. Then Estonia got the same situation as the one in Sweden.

★Hostel stay date change vs. cancellation

At that time I still could go to Sweden and yet since I’ve done with sightseeings there around five years ago and the main purpose of this time was the concert, I didn’t see any point to go to Sweden. Then I asked the hostel that I was supposed to stay at but they said they couldn’t refund me any money as I booked a bed through Hostelworld with the plan that does not refund.

However, they said I could change the date for free. On the other hand I just knew the information that the concert was merely postponed and the organisers haven’t decided the alternative date yet so I asked the hostel if I could change the date twice. They changed my booking to April and we promised that I would let them know asap when the organisers announced the alternative concert date.

★air Baltic’s flight change vs. cancellation

This concert was the first one in a while so as mentioned I was super hyper looking forward to it but it was postponed, whose fact made me wonder if I should go there anyways.This time I booked the round flights with air Baltic so I rang them

At around 10 times.

After approximately 10-time ringing, the line was finally connected, which made me wait for another 10 – 15 minutes. After that finally an agent answered the phone.

I asked the agent if I would get charged to cancel or change my flights. She told me that air Baltic had three plans: Basic, Premium and Business. This means that it depends on the plan that you made a purchase with to choose whether they charge to cancel or change the flight.

Unless you have specific points that you care about when choosing the plan, Basic is sufficient. Mine was Basic too (or let’s say I didn’t pay attention to such things at all).

What are the differences among those?

With the Basic plan, you may change the flight date just once. Also, you may claim the flight fee but you can get only the tax. (However, here is Northern Europe, as imagined, the tax rate is quite high so I was supposed to get the half of the fee that I paid.)

On contrary to the factual calculation, I still didn’t want to lose any money so I told them I needed time to think of it and hang up the phone.

2) 12th March P.M.

★Alternative concert date announcement

After a while, Swedish ticketmaster emailed me again, announcing that they decided the alternative concert date. This was a really quick decision. Really. The alternative concert date is the 6th of August. Thursday. THURSDAY.

I wondered about what to do because usually I have work on Thursdays but I remembered that I still had one week left for my annual leave even at that time so I thought it was okay and determined that I would changed the flight dates. 

★ air Baltic flight changes

Then I rang air Baltic again around 10 times, got the line connected and waited for the agent for 10 – 20 minutes again. I explained to her that I wanted go to the event in Stockholm so I needed the flights that cover the concert date period.

Based on my needs she suggested me the morning flight to Stockholm and another morning flight from Stockholm and I changed them for free. These flights will be in the super early morning but better than nothing.

The air Baltic agent confirmed my email address and then sent me the flight changes by email. Nothing special happened. Everything was getting fine.

★Hostel booking date change

As mentioned above, the hostel and I promised to inform them immediately when the event organisers announced the alternative date for the concert. Therefore, accordingly to the flights by air Baltic, I changed the hostel booking dates as well. (However I believe this was exceptional. Given that you use Hostelworld, usually you need to contact Hostelworld. Just keep in mind.)

★Flixbus booking change

I also booked one bus with Flixbus from the nearest bus stop of the hostel in Stockholm to Stockholm Arlanda airport, which required me to change. Unlike air Baltic, Flixbus had a chat support available.

I’ll publish another article on how to change the booking with Flixbus later.

Here you may access and get information of how to change the booking on Flixbus.

★Swisscare travel insurance

Since I have worked for an Estonian company as a resident in Estonia, I have health insurance in Estonia but this is not applicable outside of Estonia. For this reason, whenever I travel abroad, I purchased the travel insurance.

Due to the fact that my main travel area is Europe and I didn’t have any work in Estonia for one year since I came to Estonia, I always purchased the health insurance on Swisscare, which was recommended by Tallinn University. Swisscare has multiple insurance options depending on where you go and offers those at quite reasonable price so in my opinion Swisscare is the best option.

As repeated, the concert date has been changed and both the flights and hostel booking dates were also changed, according to which I needed to change the period of the travel insurance on Swisscare so I rang them. However the agent told me to email them because he couldn’t solve my problem for some reason.

The problem was the fact that Swisscare’s help centre doesn’t have any number for it and I had no reply even as of the 13th. I have contacted them by email previously so I was sure that they would reply but it seems this is because of COVID-19 again… I’ll update the article when I got the reply from them.

I’ve got a reply on the 16th so I’ll update sooner or later.

In summary, Louis Tomlinson’s concert in Stockholm was completely postponed, accordingly to which the flights and the hostel bookings were also changed. There is still the problem regarding Swisscare left yet, the more problematic one is my annual leave that was supposed to start in the coming week.

3) 13th March A.M.

★Contacts to the booked hostels

I was supposed to spend my one-week annual leave in some Balkan countries that I have never been to, but (it was said that) Germany would get 70% of the population infected and I don’t care about myself but do about others such as my flatmates. For these reasons I changed my mind and postponed my leave as well.

First thing is first. I tried to either cancel or change the booking dates of the hostels that I was supposed to stay at during the vacation. I contacted them with my booking numbers but as I booked the hostels via Hostelworld so unlike the hostel in Stockholm, they all told me to contact Hostelworld about the cancellation or rebooking owing to COVID-19.

★Contact to Hostelworld

I asked Hostelworld with all the booking numbers because all the hostels that I have booked told me the same thing as mentioned above, but even as of the 18th in the afternoon, there’s no reply yet. Perhaps many travellers are also asking and claiming the cancellation or rebooking, which made Hostelworld in a panic like airlines.

–> Check number 8)

★GetByBus’s cancellation annoucement

GetByBus is a booking platform that handles basically busses available in the Balkan countries. It was Friday and my company still allowed us to work in the office so I was there. However as I was working in the office I got a cancellation email from GetByBus to my personal email address. They said it may have taken “several day” to refund but the refund is full so I’m done with GetByBus.

★Remote work

It was really hectic even in Estonia on this day, since which some companies in Estonia “advised” the employees to work remotely but as mentioned earlier our company members were working in the office as usual. Some seemed to be sick and we have had a rule that such people had to stay at home until they get completely good. (However this is a public rule in all over Estonia.)

Then, many things had been drastically changed in Estonia second by second so our company finally “advised” all the workers to work remotely/at home. Our general meeting would be implemented via Skype (, which sounds really like Estonia) and our CTO made a group chat for our daily reports which is now mandatory. (I used the term “mandatory” but our company is not that strict at all so reporting would be really “friendly”.)

4) 13th March P.M.

★One whole day to contact Ryanair

I was concerned about my vacation using the annual leave, which was supposed to start in the coming week since Thursday, the 12th so I checked Ryanair’s help centre and realised that Ryanair’s help centre was open from six in the morning (GMT). Then I kept opening the chat while I was working in the office.

However, it seemed that every government’s announcement regarding COVID-19 has perplexed people, which has led the subsequent cancellations of flights so although I started contacting them at eight in the morning (which is six in GMT), the agent didn’t respond me at all. In the afternoon, I finally got connected with the agent but as of then Ryanair still hadn’t announced anything on the coming flights, keeping the usual operations and fees so I just let it go.

I’ll write an article separately for those who want to know how to contact Ryanair’s help centre.

★easyJet

There was another flight that I was supposed to use for my vacation: easyJet which is a British LCC. In my opinion their action regarding COVID-19 was faster than Ryanair. Roughly speaking, they already announced that no change fee would be applied to any flights. I’ll also write about this separately.

★Shortages at supermarkets 

In Japan people posted pictures of the empty racks of toilet papers and masks on social media. Estonia had the same panic.

I usually make menus on Thursdays for the following week and go to supermarkets, checking discounts at Rimi and Maxima. However, I was sure I shouldn’t do it this time. I rather needed to get foods anyways.

Then I went to a supermarket but as I expected “usual” products were all gone and there were boxes of stocks in the corner of care products perhaps because the clerks didn’t have time to organise and display them properly.

As of last Thursday I couldn’t see a sanitiser (though it was okay because I still had mine), in addition to which on Friday huge containers of hand soap were mostly gone. There were a few boxes of tissues, in-pocket tissues, small size of boxed tissues and some paper towels left. (Luckily I already bought two packages of toilet papers several days ago and had stored them so my flatmate and I were not affected by this panic.)

Sanitary products were basically not affected but makeup remover in sheets were quite gone. Shampoos and such were also enough stocked.

But!

When I went to the bread section after this, there was a different world.

All the shelves were mostly empty.

Like the ones seen on Twitter!!

I thought so and took a picture.

Yeah, I’m not worried at all, mate.

Breads are fundamentally sold loaf by loaf in Estonia like other European countries. (In Japan, one package has only one-third or -fourth of one loaf.) This time there were only some half loaves left.

So I bought two and made one loaf.

Next, I went to the vegetable and fruit section.

It seemed it didn’t get affect by COVID-19 but as I went to the carrot section, Jesus. All the carrots that were usually stored there a lot, whose container was empty this time. The container beside the carrot section for cabbages was also empty. The other container next to it for potatoes were, of course, empty as well.

So I bought two courgettes.

Whenever I looked at this picture, I believe that the Estonians probably don’t know how to cook aubergines. Only aubergines were left a lot.

By the way, I managed to get two medium-sized onions, bell peppers as well as cellories. (The latter two veggies didn’t seem to get affected by COVID-19.) I didn’t buy but there were also quite sufficient amounts of tomatoes, mushrooms and cucumbers.

I had stored meat and seafood in my freezer so skipped that section and went to the dairy product section.

There were only a few packs of milks and almost all of the cheese and butter were gone. I could get some cheese but my favourite Saaremaa’s butter was all gone. I didn’t check any yoghurt so I don’t know what has or has not happened to them. Ah also probably eggs were mostly gone too.

I couldn’t find any oatmeals or other types of flours a lot either. Just in case I bought one bag of pizza flour. If the breads and oatmeal were gone, you also could expect something – of course any types of pasta were also nearly all bought.

I found a few bags of Rimi’s fusilli so I bought three bags (one bag = 400g). It didn’t seem that pasta sauce like pesto would be sold out but since it was difficult to get proper veggies and some news mentioned that any frozen products were mostly gone too, I bought two jars of pesto just in case.

There was a product that actually surprised me: rice. It’s understandable that people crazily buy breads, pasta and potatoes because Estonia is an European country.

However this time even round grain rice that I usually buy instead of Japanese rice was gone and only Basmati or long grain rice or the one so-called sushi rice are kind of left. I didn’t buy any rice as I already had enough at home anyways though.

Therefore, this is all about what I saw in the huge supermarket, HyperRimi. I actually thought the economics could go well but it is also true that I was kind of worried about when I can get food next time since many food products were gone.

On the other hand I still have some snacks, candies and miso soup from my mam in Japan so ultimately speaking my life is assured in a sense but still I want to eat properly every day, you know.

5) 14th March A.M.

★Free flight changes with Ryanair

It was Saturday. On waking up in the morning and checking the phone, I found that Ryanair finally emailed the coming passengers. I opened all flights on Ryanair and easyJet in different tabs on the browser and made an alternative plan for my vacation. 

I was planning to have one-week vacation in March and one more in July but I had to change the schedules and 

You know it’s summer, the tickets are more expensive in general.

So my summer plan is like this; right after coming back from Louis Tomlinson’s concert in Stockholm to Tallinn, I will be off for my vacation for around two weeks. How stupid I am.

It was a matter of time since Friday but I was happy that I could change the most important parts. I’ll renew the article since the problems about the hostels and Swisscare’s travel insurance are not resolved yet as of the 14th.

6) 14th March P.M.

★Refund from GetByBus

Personally the Balkan area is unknown for me so as described in the email I expected that it would take approximately one week to get the refund. This is not about the conversion and such but I paid in euro because GetByBus showed the prices in euro.

On contrary the tickets had the prices in Croatian Kuna so they seemed to have converted based on the prices Croatian Kuna. In summary my refund was around 20 cents more than the actual money that I spent.

7) 16th March P.M.

★Response from Swisscare

There was a response from Swisscare, an insurance company.

They said it was not impossible to modify the insurance once it’s purchased but told me to let them know when I bought another insurance to go to Stockholm and then they will refund me. Maybe this is because I told them that the concert was postponed owing to COVID-19.

So my recommendation on travel insurance is still Swisscare.

8) 21th March P.M.

★Response from Hostelworld

There was reply from Hostelworld, a platform to book hostels.
(I literally messaged them three time, which worked…)

Usually they don’t refund us if we use the non-refundable plan (which is cheaper) but they did this time as credits to my Hostelworld account so that I can use from next time because of COVID-19 which is the biggest problem in all over the world now.

I will write an article about this some time in the future.

Aitäh! 🙂