The EU Launches ‘Reopen Europa’ to allow you to plan a European getaway

With COVID-19 bringing the travel industry (and the world) to a standstill for the past few months, some countries have begun to reopen their borders. Some have stipulations about where people can visit from, and how you can enter their country, but ‘Reopen Europa’ contains all this information on an open map.

Myself and Amy had been planning an interrailing trip from Budapest to Bologna (via Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Venice), and are therefore still unsure about the logistics of cross country travel. However Italy is open and if we rearranged our entry flight from Budapest to Napoli, we could spend 2 weeks navigating through Italy (I’ll put on so much weight living on Italian food for 2 weeks).

The website is updated daily, which would let you know where you stand it terms of booking a summer European trip, and let’s you know what’s available in each country. I’ll show some examples that could potentially affect me below.

As rules currently stand, I’d have to quarantine for 2 weeks on arrival to Hungary.
Similarly museums are reopening from the 16th June onwards. It would be redundant to visit somewhere without being able to check out some museums.
Slovenia are currently limiting which countries you can travel via train from into Slovenia, furthermore as it currently stands we may have to quarantine despite travelling from Croatia/Hungary due to being in Ireland in the last 14 days.
Croatia on the other hand have opened their country up to seemingly all types of travel with no quarantine period.
Italy’s bars and restaurants have reopened under the condition they comply with measures to stop the spread of COVID.
Germany’s bars are opened at the discretion of each state minister.
And I would have to quarantine for 2 weeks upon returning to Ireland

Is it too soon for countries to reopen?

That’s for each country to assess themselves, we’ve seen some countries worldwide prioritise their economy over their citizen’s health. And for the traveller’s it’s at their own discretion as nobody is forcing them to travel, but they are taking their health into their own hands and potentially infecting others. Please don’t travel if you suspect you have COVID-19, and please take necessary precautions to avoid catching/spreading it. Safe travels.

Leave a Reply