I thought I was so lucky. I thought I was gonna to really expand my credentials as a world traveller. Things don't always work out, I am learning this year.
The plan was to fly to Copenhagen for a first-ever trip to Scandinavia and hook up with Marlena. Then we were flying to Barcelona --via a detour to Prague -- for a week including a train ride into France where her friends have a summer house.
A bonus add-on to this dream vacation came in the form of an invitation from the State Department to do some seminars for women journalists in Minsk. They were willing to fly me from Barcelona and then back to Sarajevo.
In early June I mailed my new passport to Washington so that they could secure me a visa for Belarus. I thought I would be ok since I still have my old passport which doesn't expire until November. I expected it back in a couple of weeks. I looked forward to Sunday, July 16. I collected infor about Prague and Barcelona things to see and do.
My passport didn't come back but the state department woman I'm dealing with said they were having trouble with the Belarussians. The Secretary of State saying bad things about their dictatorial and oppressive government didn't help. They could ship my passport with the visa to Barcelona.
On Saturday, July 15, Dave, our visiting editor here asked a question that stopped me cold. It was "Are you sure you can travel on an old passport?" I pulled it out and indeed -- why had I never noticed this before -- saw the large red CANCELLED stamp and the holes punched into the cover. I called my state department source in Washington.
She was tracked down at a wedding, but she was nice and she was reassuring. It won't be a problem with the old passport she said. If you have any trouble you have the State Department emergency number.
At 5:30 a.m. Sunday July 16, the first day of my vacation, I woke up, went to the office to leave my keys, got a taxi, went to the airport, got through security, got my boarding passes and went to passport control.
That's where my vacation ended.
No way, the Bosnian customs people told me. I called my contact at home -- even though it was 2 a.m. in Washington and got her answering machine. I called the state department emergency line which woke up a duty officer who called the consular officer in Sarajevo.
No way, he told him. I had been misinformed.
Misinformed by the U.S. State Department in Washington? This is not winning new votes for George Bush!!
Humor did not help. The best he could do, he said, was let me come into the embassy the next day and pay $100 for an emergency passport, but I couldn't travel on Sunday, July 16.
I was miserable all day. Monday was worse.
It seems my contact at the State Department wasn't in the office. She is traveling in Europe for 3 weeks. Her designated replacement couldn't help me either. She was home on a medical emergency.
Czech airlines decided they could only reimburse me 240 of the 740 euros I spent on the ticket I could not use and it would cost 450 euros to fly into Barcelona. The embassy and the State Department decided that I would have to pay for the emergency passport even though I needed it through no fault of mine.
And it's unknown if the Belarussian will give me a visa or when.
I am opting to remain in Sarajevo, have my passport whenever it reappears, shipped here and my flight from Barcelona to Minsk changed to a round-trip Sarajevo-Minsk.
We'll see if it happens. Minsk will BE my vacation, apparently.
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