I’ve been keeping this saga secret, not wanting to worry my family unnecessarily (sorry, guys). But now that it’s all resolved and the passport is sitting securely in my bag, I can tell the whole story. It’s a good one.
So! My passport was nabbed my first night in Sarajevo. The next day we went to the American embassy to apply for a new one, and since I would be in the country for three weeks, decided to just skip the temporary phase and send to the States for a full-fledged permanent replacement. No problem. It was supposed to arrive in a week.
When we got back to Sarajevo after a week and a half in other cities, I went back to the embassy to pick it up, expecting it to be there. The first trip was on July 5th, which was unfortunate, because Americans working in foreign embassies get American holidays off as well as the holidays of that country… so no luck. I went back the next day at noon, during our lunch break between meetings, only to be told by a security guard that the entire embassy was on lunch break from noon to 2 pm and no one—no one at all—could talk to me. And that they closed again at 3:30. (So apparently, if you don’t want to work long hours, the embassy is the place to be!)
So, okay, no big deal, I called them a few times to set up a time… and then got some bad news. My passport, which had been mailed from the States on July 1st, hadn’t arrived yet. But passports which had been mailed later had already made it to Sarajevo, so they didn’t know where mine was. Oh well, I figured—I had until Monday, so I would just wait. I called every day, only to be told, “Sorry Kelly, it’s not here yet… try again tomorrow.” (Pretty soon, the lady at the consulate greeted me by name before I even said anything… we’re pretty much best friends now.) Ha.
So on Friday, becoming a bit worried, I talked to my embassy lady and reminded her I was leaving the country on Tuesday and would need some way to get home. They still didn’t know where my passport was—they said sometimes they’ve been mailed to Bogota instead of Bosnia. (Uh, wrong continent.) I was fine with the idea of an emergency passport, except for the fear that I needed to send my passport to Northwestern when I get home in order to get my Romanian visa for this upcoming fall semester… and I wouldn’t be able to get the visa on a temporary passport. She told me to wait until Monday. I did. I called at 9 am. No luck. I went to the embassy at 10:30 to file the paperwork for an emergency one, thankfully in possession of two extra (ugly) passport photos. She told me to come back at 4:00 to pick it up. I did. When I entered the complex, the security guard greeted me with, “Cao, Miss Larsen,” which made me laugh—even the security guard was sick of seeing me, I guess! They ushered me in—I made small talk with some guy from New Jersey who works for the OSCE, which was a pleasant diversion—and then I heard my embassy lady call my name. I turned around and went up to the window, where she grinned and waved the two passport photos at me. “We didn’t need them,” she said, and handed me my official passport. It had finally come.
Just in the nick of time. Amen and hallelujah.
:)
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