It seems like forever ago. I was working in tourism and was slightly overwhelmed with my travel schedule, only being home about 50% of the time. How times have changed… Since my brilliant 6 weeks in Portugal I haven’t even visited another city! It’s been one year and almost 2 months since I flew to Canada for an exciting meeting with all my former colleagues. This was my last visit outside of Europe.
In Canada I met all the other tour leader managers from all over the world. We were a great, happy bunch and I met many of them for the first time. Despite jetlags it was a week with a full program, starting with meetings and ending with dinner and fun in the evenings. We discussed a range of topics, sang karaoke, prepared activities aimed for children, shared best practices and had the time of our lives. We were grouped in fours that shared a house together. The place was massive and I loved my squad. It was great to be able to discuss things all together in the meeting rooms, but it was even better to have many one on one, or small group chats and learn from my peers.
A meeting in Canada in January. Who came up with that idea? Some days it was cold, really cold! Good thing they’d arranged for us to stay at Blue Mountain, where we could enjoy some of our off time on the snow. One night the whole crew went out for tubing. The tracks don’t look like much in the photo, but it was actually super exciting. The staff at the top got really into it and launched us onto the track, spinning down the slide. Add in some snowball throwing, and we forgot all about the cold.
On another night a small group went out for night skiing. Blue Mountain doesn’t have the biggest slopes of Canada, but the majority of the group consisted of beginners, so it was just fine. With the few more advanced skiers and boarders I took the chairlift to the top to explore the different slopes. There was hardly anyone there. Even though the slopes weren’t super long, it was great to be back on skis and to share this experience with great people. The rest of the time we had fun helping out the beginners on the practice slope.
During this event, the tour leader manager of China was busy dealing with things for her team at home. For the most part, the rest of us weren’t involved. We were on a constant high that couldn’t be broken. All we knew was it had something to do with a virus. After an intense week we all flew home again. Some weeks after that, we all understood what our Chinese colleague had been dealing with. All of us got the virus as our main priority and our main uncertainty. Tours were being rerouted and eventually cancelled. Policies seemed to change on a daily basis. And then all tourism just stopped.
I met so many great people during these five intense days in Canada. I look back at the photos and see how much fun we had. These were all people that totally understood me and what my life was all about. They were like-minded spirits and they became my community, together with the tour leaders in Europe. We had built this great connection that we were going to foster and that was going to help us all in our roles. There was just so much positivity and love.
Looking back at the photos now, I realize most of these people have lost their jobs, including me. The pandemic has had a big impact in my community, to the people like me, who don’t always follow the main road, but take wonderful little side tracks instead. I didn’t have time to foster these relationships. Our lives turned upside down before we could. I hope they’re doing well and are finding their way in a new life. Maybe one day we’ll meet again. At least we had this great event before everything started crumbling and falling down. China was a warning we all should have been more aware of. We could have known…
