In the spirit of leveraging other people’s mistakes rather than learning from your own, I am going to share this nugget of wisdom inspired by today’s experience that almost grounded us today. I hope it helps you save yourself unnecessary aggravation when you book your next international mega trip: do not let the expiration date on the first page of your passport fool you – it ain’t what it seems.
Apparently, in order to travel internationally your US passport needs to be valid for full 3 to 6 months after your scheduled return date depending on the country of destination, no matter how short your trip or how limited the intended stay. A tail of two and a half months is not enough. Who knew – who knew government rules could defy logic and common sense? To such an extent at least. What’s the risk, that we would seen asylum in Bavaria? What are we – Ukrainian peasants? Albanian refugees? Or US citizen? An expiration date is an expiration date is an expiration date – it wouldn’t be called expiration date otherwise, right? I mean, they would surely call it something else, no? At the very least you would think the Immigration Office would find a way to alert you – mail you a notice, send an email reminder, push a text to your phone – as your passport gets close while otherwise remaining perfectly valid? As turns out, this is a weak assumption, and must be avoided if at all possible. Not much there to hang your hat on other than the world’s collective reliance on the passport holder’s prior knowledge.
What can I say? A slightly embarrassing discovery for an avid – and until recently active – international traveler who is ostensibly used to bimonthly and sometimes intramonth frequency of Europe bound flights booked on short notice. We simply had no muscle memory built up from prior experience, last passport renewals were made ten years ago, for no apparent or immediate reason, on our terms, well in advance, and not when we already needed the extension. We were not alone: for what it’s worth, several hundred people show up every day to the Immigration building on Hudson, just a block from S.O.B.’s, with exactly this problem – a same day flight, and passport expiring in just two and a half months – some of them rolling their carry-ons and suitcases into the federal interview room. Anna and I were well aware of our March 2018 passport expirations but given our early Jan return, we mostly just talked about it and did nothing – the passports are valid and in full force and effect. Until last night that is, when we tried to check in.
It is a deflating feeling – like that moment when you have been brought down gasping to all fours by a sudden punch in the stomach – when during attempted online check-in you find out that your passports don’t meet the requirements of Germany or Switzerland let alone Austria. And it wouldn’t be a case of simply not being able to fly back and having to stay in Europe until you sort things out – that would have been more than ok with me, soaked in the season’s festive spirit, mulled wine and espresso, I could stay there indefinitely, and work, reflect, blog remotely, and perhaps learn something new in the process – no, this would be a case of being turned back at the departure airport by sternly barking TSA officials, facing a temporary but forced family separation since the kids’ passports were fine, stiff ticket rebooking fees, thousands of dollars’ worth of hotel room, transfer and ski lift reservation charges hanging over, the long awaited vacation itself at risk, or at least the first day of it. Not to mention that starting a new year on this note wouldn’t be at all good for one’s self esteem, and not in the spirit of positive thinking, ability to take risks, or asserting oneself against everyday competition.
And it is Christmas Day, emphatically and not surprisingly one of the worst days to get anything resolved (I was having flashbacks to another Christmas Day in Rome years ago, during the Jurassic age before smart phones and international data plans, when our phoneless but very authentic 17th century apartment off Piazza Navona got flooded in the middle of the night on Christmas – all third part services shut down, nobody to talk to, all temperature and flow controls hidden from sight. After numerous attempts to scrape together enough coins to use a pay phone in the lobby of a boutique hotel on the next corner, I finally got through to the gal who had handled our apartment booking, she couldn’t provide advice on how to stop the flooding and was in bed at the moment… the only saving grace is that she was sleeping with her colleague who was responsible for this property, so happened to be in the right bed, at the right time – the guy came by, with a well practiced motion removed a bathroom cabinet and reached into a niche in the wall to turn the control valve off, a centuries old secret a guest had no way of knowing about, and proceeded to soak up the puddle of water in the floor, while we evacuated to that hotel nearby for the remaining few hours of the night before getting a massive upgrade to a nicer attic level apartment across town in the morning, even though the flooding was self-inflicted. All ended well despite the perfect storm of a flood in a disconnected apartment in a foreign city on a Christmas night, thanks to the booking gal’s fortuitous choice of bed partners, but not without an adventure).
Happy to say, everything has worked out in the passport front, Anna and the US federal government outperformed all expectations, one of them uncharacteristically. Anna surprised to upside by placing a phone reservation last night for late afternoon today despite no appointment availability online until later this week – too late to make the flight but, since the doorkeepers do not ask for time the reservation but simply whether you can produce proof of one, perfectly sufficient to enter the building at 7:30am sharp when the doors opened. A reservation bought us some street cred and enough conviction to walk in with no waiting, leaving behind bending around the block a three hour long queue of freezing and disgruntled people who had been camping out in front since 5am. We appropriately and actively suppressed our smiles, middle fingers, and any emotion while walking past them towards the entrance. Once inside among the very first batch of people, we were able to have our appointment accelerated, and got called in before we finished the one page application – this was a federal agency surprising to upside against bearish expectations. Two hours of minimum prescribed processing time went by fast, over a coffee in the comfort of an LPQ strategically located across the street – where I wrote and saved this blog worthy entry – immediately capped with an espresso at Gregory’s next door. Our brand new passports – in their blank emptiness resembling someone’s bare bottom more than pages of a busy travel document, and in stark contrast to my previous passport cluttered with customs stamps in dozens of languages and a few alphabets and long out of pages – were waiting for our signature less when we got back in!
We were fully prepared for plan B – to camp out in front of the building and then spend most of the day inside, with a supply of layers and reading material. In a deliberate effort to solicit pity from NIS passport officer or at the very least to secure his empathy, Anna deployed a strategy of not putting any makeup on to look more plain and desperate – didn’t work since she still looked very good, but also unnecessary since plan A worked so well. Lesson learned – and shared, and hopefully read – I only have one advice on US passports now: renew first, ask later.
