a process that’s a bit anxiety provoking
I’m currently passportless in Barcelona
Love notes from Siel is a newsletter about love, writing, and the nomad life from me, Siel.
Dear friend —
One irony of the nomad life is that while it gets easier and easier to completely relocate to another continent on a whim, it gets tougher and tougher to get small administrative things accomplished.
Getting a passport renewed, for example, becomes a complex ordeal requiring careful coordination of international travel plans and serious troubleshooting skills.
It all began in September, when I was staying at my sister’s in St. Louis. I thought renewing my U.S. passport would be easiest to do while I was actually in the U.S. Alas, regular processing was reportedly taking seven to nine weeks, and even expedited processing took up to five — while I planned to be in the country for only four. The only other option — urgent travel, for which you need to go to the consulate in person in the week or so before your scheduled flight — required me to drive across state lines to Chicago.
So I decided to wait. A month went by in Puerto Rico, another in Buenos Aires — during which I toyed with the idea of pretending I’d lost my passport, which would have expedited the process significantly.
But I don’t like lying —
By the time I got to Barcelona late last month, I had no choice but to get my passport renewed ASAP — it had just three months left on it.
I thought about trying the urgent travel option again, but I didn’t feel confident that the U.S. consulate in Barcelona would manage to process my passport in the week between xmas and new year’s day, when I initially planned to leave. So I did it the regular way — a process said to take about five weeks, with no expediting option available.
This was no easy task in a new town. I had to find a little mom-n-pop shop that took passport photos and ask them to cut my image into a non-standard 2”x2” square. I had to find a little photocopy place because for whatever reason, the consulate required me to send in not only my passport but also a photocopy of said passport. I had to find a place that would print for me, because although I could fill out the passport renewal form and pay the application fee online, both the form and the receipt had to be printed out, too. I also needed to fill out a DHL form to get the new passport mailed back to me — a form so unintuitive that DHL has created an illustrated 7-page instruction manual to help you complete it — and print that out.
I still wasn’t done — I had to staple my passport photo to the renewal form. So I walked over to Flying Copenhagen and bought a mini office kit with a tiny stapler. Then I went back to the photo shop and bought a big envelope to put everything into.
Finally, I had to take a bus to the consulate . The public transportation in Barcelona is great so that part was easy!
The process of dropping off my application was oddly cumbersome. The guard out front pointed me to a guy behind a plastic window, who had me unpack my passport envelope so I could show him my current passport. Once he waved me through the front gate, I went through a security scanner, for which I had to turn off my iPhone. As soon as I made it through, I was pointed to a black box attached to a wall. There I dropped in the package — then reversed the process —
All this took a full workday!
Now, I just need to wait — a process that’s a bit anxiety provoking, partly because I’m currently passportless, and partly because I don’t know when I can leave Barcelona. The online tracking system says my passport is “In process” —
In the meantime I have other pesky administrative matters to attend to. Discover keeps sending me emails with the subject line: “Urgent: Your card expired” — but I don’t know where my new card is so I can’t activate it. Covered California too keeps bugging me with emails titled “You have a new notice from Covered California” — but I can’t read said notices because their website isn’t accessible from outside the country and I haven’t gotten around to signing up for a VPN service —
And all the while Barcelona beckons, with its festive xmas lights and holiday markets and churros con chocolate —
Happy holidays from Barna, where I’ll be until I get my new passport.
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
When strangers rate your feet out of five stars. This hilarious personal essay by Ziwe made me get a pedicure. “To my horror, I learned that I had a wikiFeet rating of two stars, categorized as “okay feet.” While “okay” is technically not an insult, it is not a compliment, either.”
When your fave influencer becomes your vacation buddy. “Following the same influencer, it turns out, can be a far more accurate compatibility test than whether you watch the same TV shows or listen to the same music.”
When a reader turns into a stalker. Laura Barton shares her experience with a fan who got too obsessed with her. “An estimated one in five women and one in 10 men will be the victim of stalking.”
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Since you’re stuck in one place, Barcelona was a good choice
Good luck..your new passport will be in your hands soon!