Technology and Tears
As someone who has worked online for a number of years, I don’t picture myself as the person who struggles (at least not too much) with technology.
Enter Europe. Despite covid and given that I am triple vaccinated, I made the trip in December to Spain. Omicron had not yet extended its presence and things were reasonably normal. As a gift, my partner planned a trip to Florence. What better time to visit when hoards of tourists weren’t making museum visits impossible without hours waiting.
The flight from Barcelona to Florence left on a Sunday so I paid a premium price for a weekend covid test. Both of us downloaded out Italian entry documents as well as vaccination information. No one checked anything as we walked through the airport on arrival.
Problems began at the hotel. My paper US vaccine document was accepted without question. My partner’s Spanish digital vaccine code didn’t work. After hours of stress and worry he finally got it downloaded and shown to the hotel staff.
This meant any museum or restaurant entered needed a working wifi connection and not to much of a firewall for his code to work. I was never so grateful for a paper document.
We managed until the airport for our return flight to Spain. I had downloaded the Spanish government QR code but it didn’t show up on my phone. My partner along with a group of Spanish students didn’t even know they needed one. The Italian staff were rude. I was almost in tears of frustration. After endless tries of re-entering the information and under pressure of missing the flight, we somehow managed to get the codes and show them to the airline staff.
QR code chaos hit me again on my return from Spain to the US. Digital dlownloads strike again!
The US is far behind Europe not only in technology (which may not be a bad thing) but in public transportation, health care, and taking care of the environment.
I was surprised when I entered a bank in Spain. It looked more like a café with tables, machines, and no tellers. When I was shopping in one store, a machine automatically read my merchandise while it was still in a basket.
The future will be this -machines and codes so we better get used to them.
