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Flashback: Passport Control

Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like you’ve reached “adulthood” and then you figuratively faceplant in a series of mistakes that make you think you’ve actually got the responsibility of the average 10 year old and no one’s had the heart to tell you? Yeah, that was our passport experience in a nutshell. It kind of goes without saying that if you’re planning on going anywhere out of the States your passport is the most important thing in your possession, you know, right in front of your iPad. So it would stand to reason that you’d take extra good care of it as a responsible adult. Yeah, you’d think so wouldn’t you? We’ve had ours since 2005 and kept them in a safe place and even used them several times over the last few years always keeping track and putting them back in a safe spot upon getting back home. For whatever reason after our house hunting trip this didn’t happen, at least not with my passport. The day we got back Amy had to send hers to be processed for an Italian work Visa (it was sent to an Italian Embassy in Texas…wouldn’t have guessed that one). Mine? Well, honestly it just kinda went down the memory hole. After getting back we had just a couple of weeks to get our life together to leave and I hit the ground running. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, I really don’t know how it didn’t think of it until the exact second I heard Amy gasp as she was folding clothes. The sheer gut wrenching horror that hits you when you realize that she found your passport and not a Palmetto bug (cockroach) is enough to make you puke, especially when YOU did the laundry (on a side note, after all this was over Amy asked ‘and what lesson did we learn here?’ My answer was that I shouldn’t be allowed to do laundry anymore….ever.  Sadly, she didn’t agree.) So, standing in the middle of our living room with less than 14 days before we leave the country for a couple of years I held in my hand a horribly warped and mangled passport that was sure to be rejected by any passport control on the planet (except for maybe Canada, they were always really nice).

Just so you know, there is some real ambiguity in the instructions on how to handle a damaged Passport. Lost or stolen? No problem. Renewal? Got you covered. Washed it like an idiot? Welcome to a bureaucratic black hole where we acknowledge that this happens all the time (by washing machine no less, but lets be honest, you don’t “accidentally” put it through a freaking wood chipper and if you did you probably don’t need it anymore anyway) but we’re not going to be really specific about the process and we don’t have a specific form for it. Ohhh Goody! It’s like doing your taxes with the warm, efficient, and friendly service of the Post Office (you get to go there too by the way). Anyway, just for future reference to save you some time, should you wash your passport, it’s considered a “NEW” passport and not a renewal. The process is completely different and if you get it wrong it will cost you some FedEx fees and a couple of days of time, not to mention the embarrassment of having some one from FastPort Passport call you and tell you without actually saying it that you may have the IQ of a fence post. Good times. You see, if you need to get this done fast you have to fill out the paperwork like you were going to mail it (NEW, not renewal) and go to the Post Office with all your stuff and pray that you’ve got everything cause if not you’re going to wait three hours and THEN have someone tell you that you need something and to come back later, and then have a company walk it through the process manually in one of like 6 cities in the U.S. (Another side note, I already had my prison photo…er passport photo taken so I didn’t need one there but there was a small girl there at the Post Office whose poor mother had everything under control for the entire three hour wait until the little tike sat on the stool to take the picture and then she sobbed like she was going to be executed by firing squad. It was funny cause it wasn’t my kid, #imahorribleperson). Fortunately for me my passport was still legible so I didn’t need the “long form” birth certificate that sent everybody else packing after three hours of waiting. After getting all this stuff sorted, paid for, signed and sealed I could then go to the FedEx and ship it BACK to FasportPassport where I had sent it four days before with the incorrect stuff. Ironically enough right after dropping this off we had to go to Boeing to have the required psych evaluation before we could leave…the fact that I just spent three hours at the Post Office should clear any of those red flags right up.

Now we wait….and wait, and wait some more. No news is technically good news except for the part where I’m quickly approaching my “I’m leaving the country for two years” date at a full sprint and I don’t know if I’ll have the one document on the face of the earth that’ll let me go yet. Many phone calls, complaining, and badgering later it finally arrives less than 48 hours before the plane takes off. WHEW! Glad that’s over….except it’s not. You see, that was just MY passport. This entire time Amy’s passport was sitting in a limbo of its own (though, technically her’s was in a legit process not one born of her own stupidity like mine). Her’s got to our house the day before mine. Before we left, and before the printer got packed up, we had to scan a copy of the work visa and send it off to someone at work. After my new one arrived Amy took it and said, “Ok, I’m going to put this one with mine!” Except, her’s wasn’t where she thought it was. In Amy’s Mom’s car, who had just left 3o minutes or so before this revelation, was a printer/scanner/fax….with Amy’s passport still sitting on the scanner glass. It wasn’t until we started looking for her Passport that it hit me like a ton of bricks, “CALL YOUR MOTHER, TELL HER TO STOP!”.  So she did, AND added (and I quote), “These passports are going to be the death of me.” Granted, this could have been worse. The printer could have been packed up with the rest of the stuff in the house, which would have been a nightmare to work out. Here at least it was only about 30 minutes up the road, and better still not all the way to Tennessee yet.  It was at this point I decided that every passport should probably come with a prescription of Prozac or blood pressure medication just so you survive the experience. In the end, we did have them both, and to her credit Amy was still smiling (could be the medication, still not sure).

Finally Passports

Two Passports, less than 24 hours to go. Note the incredibly empty garage, it hasn’t been that way since last Thanksgiving. Apparently you have to move to fix a problem like that.

Lecce

Because of the vacation season starting up there in Italy we had to change hotels mid-week to one in Lecce. This particular hotel is pretty much in the middle of town and one of the side benefits of this is getting to spend a little time in the old part of the city during down time (i.e. Dinner time). Lecce is the capital of the province (a state capital essentially) and has some really cool historical sites in it. Not the least of which is an old amphitheater which they still use for events. The first night we went strolling around there was a group there doing Swan Lake. We didn’t go in, but we were able to stand around the edges and get a peak of what was going on. While we stood there the Police behind the short fences would have parents pass their kids over and have them lift them up so they could see what was going on. Sadly, they refused to do that for me. Deeper into the older portion of the city is a little maze of shops and restaurants on the incredibly narrow stone streets. Every now and again you turn a corner and find yourself in a large courtyard or piazza. Now is a good time to explain what little we’ve learned so far about how some of this works. Pretty much everywhere closes around 2PM save for a handful of things (this handful includes where Amy will be working). After 2 the place looks like a small town on a school night. On a side note, if you plan on eating lunch, you better be walking out of the restaurant by 2 or cooking it yourself. This is riposo (siesta, essentially), where they close things down during the heat of the day and open back up in the evening as late as 7:30 ish (restaurants anyway, you know, important stuff :).  From here things will stay open at least until midnight while everyone hangs out in the piazza and eats dinner and gelato. Probably the weirdest thing was around midnight there were still parents wheeling around their kids in strollers who were wide awake while the two of us were threatening to turn back into pumpkins (I don’t know about Amy but my glass slippers were killing me). The sites are worth it though, the pictures don’t quite do them justice.

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Same Book, New Chapter…

So today Amy and I leave the U.S. for an adventure across the pond. Apparently for some reason every three years or so we find ourselves on a plane headed somewhere new. Granted, in this case we’ve already planned a return trip. Same book, just a new chapter. Now all I have to do is figure out if I’m Frodo or Sam…

P.S. For the non-geeks out there, that’s a Lord of the Rings reference.

Our Home Away from Home

So as of today, barring any weird problems, we have chosen our home away from home in Grottaglie, Italy. It’s a decently sized apartment at the edge of town within walking distance of the necessities. We’ll have to get some furniture for it, but the stuff that’s currently in it will give it some scale.

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House Hunting Pics

For your viewing pleasure….

Here are some places we looked at in the area.  They aren’t in any particular order but they should kinda be grouped together. We hope to have some better pictures of the place that we picked this afternoon. A couple of notes. First, Italians love their outdoor spaces. Just about everywhere we looked had them and they see it essentially the same way as a “room” when they think of square footage (or sq meters maybe?).  Also, they like their bidets, as any “proper” Italian bathroom will have one. Not that we know how to use it just yet.

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The Histo

The Relias Histo is actually a renovated manor house close to Toranto, Italy. A truly beautiful place.

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Getting there

So what’s with us anyway? As the Saturday for our house hunting trip rolled around we quite honestly didn’t seem to be doing anything different. That morning we worked out, heck, we even had an optometrist appointment that morning (nothing like getting your eyes dilated just before driving to the airport).  However, apparently you can do all that, pack an hour or so before you need to leave, get to the airport just an hour and a half early and still make it to nearly the other side of the planet. Somewhere in West Tennessee my father is shaking his head. This even included getting to the airport to find out that Amy technically wasn’t booked all the way to Brindisi, Italy (we’re still not sure what happened there, but they fixed it….eventually). We’ve left town using the Charleston airport many times now, but the first one we ever did where you have to walk out on the tarmac to your plane just happened to be a trip that ends in another country, very encouraging.

Small Plane

So we and 48 of our closest friends packed on this model airplane ( I kid, it was a good flight and we didn’t have to pedal) and flew to New York’s JFK airport where we discover the wonder and beauty that is multiple building/terminal chaos (granted it doesn’t hold a candle to Heathrow, where I’m pretty sure on any given day there’s an employee lost somewhere doing his own personal Survivorman show). Sadly, it did mean that we had to go back through security for an international flight. So we found a place in line and shuffled up to the part where you get to take half your clothes off and then go through a body scanner…good times. Because of the line we were held up a bit while our stuff went on through. When we finally made it through our stuff was sitting at the end of the little chute where Amy was asked, “Why are you so happy?” Oh how I wished she had thought of giving him her answer in her best Scarlett O’Hara impression when she said she was just happy to see her stuff again. Then I remembered we were in New York City, even with what little accent she has left he probably thought she WAS Scarlett O’Hara. Onward to an expensive burger and an interesting conversation with some New Yorkers that were headed to Italy on the same flight to hunt down a father’s birthplace. Brindisi wasn’t their final destination though, they were headed to Sicily. When it came time to board we got to see what it was like to have one of those “first class” tickets.  There is a LOT less hustle and bustle that way. The real beauty, however, was in the seats.

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I will be honest and say that seats that turn into beds aren’t the only way to fly but only because I’ve done it in the other kind of seats a few times already. It is the most comfortable though (and the food is fantastic).

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I have now officially been to Rome, though only just barely as we left the international area and were on another flight not too much longer afterwards. It was on this flight that I think I discovered why Italians clap upon a plane landing (or supposedly anyway, they didn’t this flight. Matt Sand, I’m disappointed). The fellow driving this thing was either a retired fighter pilot or was trying out for an air show. Granted it was a great ride but I wasn’t sure I’d be around to do it again there for a bit.

Interestingly enough, driving in Italy hasn’t been as bad as I was told it would be. But then again, when I started driving I started off with the assumption that all the other drivers were stark raving mad and planning accordingly. So far so good. The REALLY interesting part are the side roads, or at least the one that gets you to the nice hotel we’re staying at. As we pulled off the SS7 (highway essentially) Amy’s directions told us to go straight, which looked like it would put us back on the highway except for this little rough patch of asphalt that looked like it was headed into the back of some guys farm. We took it anyway (not without me saying I thought Amy was nuts) and the further we drove the more I thought we were eventually going to end up on some TV show about European serial killers. Just before I was about to just turn us around I saw that we were parallel to the highway we had been on and figured at some point we could get back on. Technically that was true but sure enough this road ended up being the right one and led us to this fantastic hotel that feels so far removed from civilization I’m not sure even Google has found it yet. Still, it’s a nice place no?

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More to come tomorrow, got to get some sleep!

Italy vs Europe

Italy apparently is a little different than “typical” Europe.

 

Going to Italy

As some of you already know, my wife and I are moving to Italy for Amy’s work at Boeing. While Facebook posts and emails will be part of our trip, we decided to start a blog for friends and family to keep up with us as we travel and live abroad. Our first trip there will actually be to look for a place to live. Our first real post will be of that!