Vaccine tourism

With a new SARS‑CoV‑2 mutation on the rise the latest insights are that two vaccines do not give the protection you need against the new omicron mutation. Unfortunately the Dutch government has been criminally late preparing for a third ‘booster’ vaccine campaign. In early December I was likely to be vaccinated somewhere in February 2022, 8 months after my second dose. By that time it is likely omicron has completely overtaken delta. By that time I would have worked at the Spielwarenmesse (International Toy Fair) in Nürnberg meeting hundreds of people from all over the world. I consider the risk of being infected with omicron over this winter close to 100%. That’s an unacceptable risk. Not only for me but also for my father and all other residents in his care home where he is rehabilitating from his pneumonia. I do visit him every weekend.

Even within the European Union vaccination programs have been national. On December 5 I read on Twitter that there is a vaccination center in Aachen, Germany, with a different view point. RapidCare is a private vaccination center and being close to The Netherlands and Belgium they decided nationality does not matter. And why should it? We are all part of the EU, the QR-code is valid in all of the EU countries, no matter which nationality you are. RapidCare was only opened on 4 December 2021, so I read the news pretty fast thanks to Twitter. The vaccination was completely free as in gratis.

I quickly booked an appointment for December 16, the first day of my week off. I consider this week as a personal circuit breaker. When I return to work my booster vaccine is effective and by then we know a little more about omicron, I hope.

The vaccination center in downtown Aachen.

There was a thirty minute lag between the vaccination and being able to retrieve my QR-code at a German pharmacy so I took time to have an early lunch with Reibekuchen (also named Kartoffelpuffer) at the Aachen Christmas market. In Bavaria these are named Reiberdatschi and they are basically very finely grated potatoes, fried and served with apple sauce. They are a Christmas market favourite.

I cannot load my data in the Dutch CoronaCheck app so I am using the German Corona-Warn app. The QR-code is valid in the EU so this is no problem. One would hope there would be a tighter collaboration between the EU countries.

Korea Town in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is half way Aachen and Winterswijk so I took a small detour to downtown Düsseldorf for some shopping in one of the many Korean and Japanese grocery stores. There is also a large collection of Korean restaurants but it was Monday midday so I didn’t eat anywhere. Besides: I don’t enjoy eating solitary in restaurants and I have been eating alone too often now in the previous years. Koreans in Germany remain the second-largest group in Western Europe after the United Kingdom.

Hanaro market is one of the biggest Korean grocery stores. They have a pretty good selection. Unfortunately the table ware section was limited to the basics. I was happy to find myeongnanjeot 명란젓, fermented pollock roe. This is made by marinating the roe with salt, mirim, garlic, ginger and gochugaru 고추가루 for al least a couple of weeks.