In the Netherlands, I felt like I’d stepped back into a pre-coronavirus world

It took months for me to get used to the “new normal” – the protocols and accoutrements of the coronavirus era, where surgical masks are de rigueur, hand sanitiser is frequently used and special care is given to maintaining proper social distancing.

Entering stores and supermarkets in Istanbul, I dutifully bowed my forehead to the guards holding temperature guns. On my first trip abroad, I handed immigration officials in France my coronavirus test results. In a town in Normandy, I waited outside a boulangerie until the previous customer exited, abiding by store rules requiring only one patron at a time inside.

I kept my mask on during a train ride to Brussels, where a surge in coronavirus cases has prompted authorities to impose grim lockdown measures; even so-called “24-hour” stores shut down at 10pm.

So it was something of a shock getting off the train in the Netherlands, where masks are only required on public transportation and in airports.

In Leiden, where I was visiting a friend, it felt like taking a step back in time to the pre-coronavirus world. I walked along the all-pedestrian Haarlemmerstraat, where no one wore a mask, and social distancing was minimal.

Browsing for supplies at a Hema store, I felt naked without my mask. I nearly had a panic attack handling the fruit at the Albert Heijn supermarket. I didn’t realise how sensitive I had grown to what I touched and breathed.

“You can always wear your mask if you want,” my friend even said at one point, noticing my unease.

Still, despite the Netherlands’ comparatively lackadaisical approach to coronavirus, it has fared medically not much worse than France, which has imposed harsher lockdown measures, and better than Belgium, while the Dutch economy has survived better than most (but not all) European countries.

As I stepped out of the alternative universe of the Netherlands, got back on the train, and surveyed the masked pedestrians and passengers making their way in and out of Paris Gare du Nord a few days later, I wondered if all the months of anguish, wrangling and infighting across the world over how to respond to coronavirus had really made a difference.

Yours,

Borzou Daragahi

International correspondent