I had to be up bright and early this morning so Mack and I could go to the US embassy. After we got the passport and birth certificate in the mail with the wrong birth date (my mistake, not theirs), I had to figure out what we needed to do to correct it. One can usually just mail in the passport but I wasn’t too comfortable with sending the thing to Pennsylvania and waiting who knows how many weeks to get it back. The embassy issued everything within a week last time so I’m hopeful that they will be great once again…
The experience today was far more relaxed than last time. Maybe they were all just looking forward to the weekend and that’s why they were so nice. It would have been a lot nicer if I could have kept my umbrella while walking from building to building…but rules are rules I guess. It is funny how people react overly friendly when you are alone with a small child though. People were opening doors for us and everything.
We got the birth certificate back already…they updated it right there while I waited. I had been standing around for about thirty minutes when I decided to go get some coffee. The need for caffeine was starting to make me ansty but thankfully they have everything you need in there from a photo booth to a postage dispenser…and of course a little coffee bar with cold drinks and a bit of food. I planned to head back upstairs to wait outside the window but decided to stay downstairs where it was a bit cooler (no need to overheat while wearing Mack.) So I’d been down there about 10 minutes and was talking to some people that were also waiting on things (one drove from Munich and the other from Stuttgart) and a security guard approached. Oh crap, I thought. What did I do now?
She pointed at me and asked, “What’s your name?” Yep, I definitely did something wrong.
So I told her my name and she relayed that they needed me back upstairs. And still I was nervous.
But it was all for not. When I got to the window she explained that they’d lost my number so they couldn’t page me over their little system. She handed over the birth certificate and sent me on my way. So I hope this was the smarter choice for getting the passport fixed up. They seem to have their act together there even if they are a bit overserious at times. Hopefully I can walk away from there with another happy experience at the end of the year when I go to get my passport renewed…joy.
