The Stories Passports Tell

It occurred to me today, perhaps a bit belatedly, that I needed to find my passport sometime soon, since I'm planning to leave the country in about two months. Then I realized I hadn't seen it in a while. In fact, it's been about a year and a half since I last used it, and a year and a half is plenty of time to lose something so well that it can't be found. I spent about twenty minutes, off and on, on semi-panicked searching, and I found it finally, in the small space between my dresser and my computer desk -- not really the sort of place I would think to look for it, so I consider myself very lucky.

I love passports. They're fascinating things -- tangible reminders of both heritage and travel, colorful yet official, and full of stories untold. Once I found my passport, I spent a while flipping through it and reminiscing.

I had my passport renewed in February of 2001, in preparation for Claudia's and my trip to Ireland. We were both in graduate school at the time. I had a passport previously, that I'd gotten in high school when I hoped to study abroad for a year, but my plans fell through, so it went unused. This passport had to be obtained quickly, as we only decided to go to Ireland for spring break about a month before the trip, so I had my passport pictures made at a place across the street from campus, then filled out the forms at the campus post office and sent it off with the expedited fee.

We left for our two-week vacation in early March. It was my first flight over the Atlantic, and it wasn't without drama. We were flying over Greenland when a woman on our plane got dangerously ill, and instead of continuing to London, which would have taken half an hour longer, the plane turned around and headed back to North America. I remember Claudia waking me up from a restless nap to tell me we were turning around -- she'd been watching on the monitor on the seatback in front of us.

We landed in Goose Bay, Canada, where the snow in March looked to be as high as the plane we flew in. We never left the plane, but the woman was removed, and what seemed like ages later, we continued on our way. We were supposed to land in London late in the morning, then fly to Dublin, arriving at noon. Instead, we left London at sunset, and landed in Dublin well after dark. So the first stamp in my passport is the British transit visa, and then on the next page is the Irish visa, just a purple ink stamp on my passport. Claudia had to apply for it ahead of time because she's Romanian, and when her application was approved, they stuck an ornate visa sticker in her passport. I was jealous of it, though not of the effort spent in obtaining it.

The vacation, though -- the vacation was wonderful. By the time our two weeks were up, neither of us wanted to leave, despite the chill and rain of Ireland in March. I spent months researching how I could move back to Ireland to work, but I never came up with anything substantive.

Next to my Irish stamp is the Canadian customs stamp from my weekend trip to Toronto with my kid sister (who's quickly outgrowing that moniker) in August of 2002. We made a whirlwind trip to attend the Hedwig convention and had a blast, and Toronto joined Dublin on my list of international cities in which I'd be willing to live. Aside from the convention, we spent a day and a half touring downtown Toronto and visiting every leather and lingerie shop we could find. Great, great trip.

I've got two more stamps from London from my stops through there in June and July of 2003. The British, it would seem, are meticulous about stamping passports. Hungarians and Austrians, not so meticulous, interestingly. I flew into Budapest from London, where I met Claudia, and we took the bus west to Vienna.

We both adored Vienna about as much as we had adored London and started making plans to move there. Logistics caused us to bypass a planned trip to Prague, but there was plenty to do in Vienna to keep us busy the extra days we stayed. Then we headed back through Hungarian customs to return to Budapest for a few days, where we roomed with some crazy Scots who'd recently had a nasty encounter with bedbugs and a pair of Norwegian boys who were on a monthlong crusade to travel without bathing. They were kind enough to wash their socks and their feet before we shared a room with them, though.

And then to Romania. I've got the Romanian stamps in my passport, though they seem to be fading -- or perhaps they were just faint to begin with. They're located several pages behind every other stamp in my passport. Those stamps remind me of these border crossings -- every one of them was slow going. Buses would line up in a single lane, and passports would be collected from each passenger, then taken to the customs booth to be scanned. It took hours sometimes, on cramped buses full of people who didn't speak my language and couldn't pronounce my name. I had to keep an eye out for the blue passport when they brought them back to redistribute, since the pronunciation of my name in Hungarian and Romanian isn't even remotely recognizable.

And yet, though I passed through Hungarian customs three times, there's no record of my ever being there, save for what I have in my memory, and the records I kept for myself, verbal and photographic.

I went through today and labeled the stamps in pencil with their countries of origin, so that I'll recognize them in the future, even if they've faded or I've forgotten. The stories my passport tells are as precious to me as the document itself.