COVID testing in the time of...well, COVID

 Written 5/1/2021.  For the Americans, that is January 5th.  America does dates weird.

Anyway -

With any treatment there are generally two different options.  Public hospital or private clinic.  Despite countries pushing foreigners to go with the private clinic route, I often check with the public hospitals first as the treatment there is often as good as private and either free or at a greatly reduced price.  

With the COVID test, I knew I'd be paying.  Knew it.  The foreigner always pays.  I get that.  I just didn't know why I'd be paying.

Long time readers will long remember that one of my mottos is to 'never travel near or on the local holidays' - for lots of reasons.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize (didn't research it) that the Orthodox christians celebrate their xmas in the beginning of January.  Don't know why, didn't care enough to look it up nor to find out why they sell maple (?) branches to each other.  Probably a local superstition or custom.  Doesn't matter.   The important thing is that I'd be stuck traveling during the holiday - which sucks.

Then I remembered I had to get a COVID test which would mean that I would need to get tested - you guessed it - on orthodox xmas.   The next day to get the test results back, fly out the day after.

Fuck me.

My first stop was to the public hospital.   I don't think that I can get away with getting a free COVID test (though it is free for locals) but I wanted to stop there first as they do not close for xmas.

Eventually found a young man who wrote down an e-mail address for me to ask the nebulous hospital administrators (who could not be seen, only e-mailed) if I could get a test there on that day.  The third time of attempting to write the e-mail address he instead took my phone and just took a picture of it.  I asked him if he was a doctor.  He said he was not.  I assured him that with handwriting like that, he was halfway there.  The joke was not gotten.  Note that I attempted to send the e-mail right there after getting it (every time) because walking back and forth and back and forth sucks.  

Having exhausted the public hospital angle, sending an e-mail prayer to the powers that be, I made my way over to the private sector.  

Of course they're closed on xmas.

Fortunately, their test can get the results back on the same day.  I just have to get up stupidly early in the morning to take the test.  Can do!

Of course, we may still experience 'fuckery'.  You can never tell...