Penn Pandemic Diary Penn Pandemic Diary, Entry #22: How a Balkan Odyssey Ended in Inspiration

Christopher Tremoglie is a 4th year undergraduate student double majoring in Political Science and Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

My COVID-19 experience began with being detained in a foreign country in the Balkans.

This semester, I was working on two theses, in Political Science and Russian and Eastern European Studies. As such, my research took me to Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia during Spring Break.

At this time, there was still a lot of uncertainty about COVID-19 but, after speaking with my physician, I was given the ok to travel. I went equipped with an N-95 mask, latex gloves and plenty of hand sanitizer. After arriving in Ljubljana, Slovenia, my itinerary immediately began to fall apart.

I was scheduled to interview a Supreme Court Justice of Slovenia. Yet, upon my arrival, I received an email saying he had been diagnosed with...norovirus. And while this was not coronavirus, it served as an omen for things to come. Our meeting was rescheduled for a couple of days later. On that day, as part of my research, I was told I would also be meeting with a personal advisor to the president of Slovenia.

However, on the day of that scheduled meeting, I was notified that this meeting was also to be canceled. The advisor was exposed to someone who contracted COVID-19 and was feeling ill.

Later that day, the Slovenian government announced it would be instituting a lockdown, social distancing protocol, and curfew . My research trip was effectively over. Now, I had to figure out a way to return to the United States.

In order to get home, I first had to take a bus to neighboring Croatia where I would then catch a flight in Zagreb to the United States. The bus ride was uneventful until we approached the Croatian border. We arrived at the border checkpoint at 12:20pm local time; we would never move again.

Our bus just stopped and waited. We were not provided any information as to why or how long it would be. Four hours passed before we were notified sternly by a Croatian border official, “it’s going to be a long night.”

Ultimately, twelve hours passed before I tried to make sense of what was happening. I left the bus and walked about a quarter mile to a pavilion crowded with travelers yelling and asking questions of border officials. I tried asking a question but was told I must return to the bus or I would be put in jail.

Eventually, I found one officer who informed us that everyone traveling into Croatia from a country that had had an outbreak of COVID-19 was going to be placed in quarantine at a Croatian hospital for 14 days – at our expense. This led to what I can only describe as civil unrest at the border crossing.

Groups of travelers began to leave the buses and head towards the border. One of the passengers on my bus told me that the passengers were rallying together to “rush the border” on foot.

It was now 1:30 am. After thirteen hours without food or water, I decided that I had enough but I was not going to join an illegal border rush. Instead, I decided that I would walk back to Slovenia. Six other people joined me.

We gathered our bags and walked on the shoulder of the highway towards Slovenia. After being yelled at by Slovenian authorities, we were eventually permitted to cross back into the country. I found a gas station on Google Maps that was 2.5 miles away and guided our small group there. We were eventually able to get a cab back to Ljubljana where everyone went their separate ways. The next day, I found a flight back to the United States. The Balkan Odyssey was over.

A day or so after I returned, I went grocery shopping. While parking my car, an elderly woman flagged me down. She was afraid to enter the grocery store and asked if I could buy her groceries for her if she gave me money. Without hesitating I accepted.

This incident motivated me to create a campaign to help people that had similar fears. I created a website for a free grocery delivery service for the most at-risk groups that were concerned about going out in public. Such people could sign up and I would voluntarily go grocery shopping and deliver the food to their houses. Even though I was putting my own health at risk, I felt a sense of duty to help others during this time.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “The noblest question in the world is: What good may I do in it?” In the uncertain times we find ourselves, one’s answer to this question is more meaningful now than it ever has been.

The views expressed in the Penn Pandemic Diary are solely the author’s and not those of Penn or Perry World House.