Passport drama

It can happen that everything you plan is destroyed with one little uncertainty. At least that is how I felt the last few days. Namely, I have sent my passport to the indian embassy in Den Hague in an express post. This means that the letter is sent through a secure special channel within the post (at least that is what they tell you). After the day that I expected the passport back I called the embassy and asked when I could expect my passport. They told me that they never received my passport! After a whole afternoon calling to the post office, municipality, airport, police and embassy a couple of times, the only option for me was to apply for an emergency passport to at least make my journey to the UK with my granny. I found out about this all on tuesday and we where leaving on friday. So Wednesday 8 o'clock in the morning i went to the municipality office.

I went there because i decided to apply for an emergency passport. The procedure for an emergency passport is as follow:
Get a registration form from the municipality
Get a statement from the police that says that your passport is stolen
Show that you need the passport quick with your travel papers

What did I have?

Only my travel papers!?

So i went to the municipality to get registered in the county and then to get my registration papers. However, because i was not yet registered in the county, it took one week to process the application, and to register, you need approval from the occupant (my granny) where you are going to live with. So to get my registry done i needed to drive one more time up en down (10km) Then to the airport (i didn't had the knowledge yet about the police statement, 30km) Once there the guy said that i first should try once more to go postoffice and try to trace the package (i could not do that because i lost the track and trace number) He said that it is mandatory of the postoffice to keep record of express letters and their barcodes. Unfortunately they didn't. However, the had still their sticker book where the stickers are who go on the letters to make an envelope express. The numbers on these stickers are following up one another. This made it possible to find out what my track and trace number needed to be, at least in what range. On the web I searched over 100 numbers but no luck. My last option was to go to the headoffice. They could find out that a express letter that in the range of 3000 around the number that i was, was not delivered in that area. This meant that my passport was lost.

The next step was to go to the police office to get my statement. This took me 30 min. On my way back to the airport, I was two minutes away, I received a call from the embassy that their just happened a miracle! My passport had just arrived!!

This whole story describes the complexity of what can happen if you loose your flipping passport!
During these times I encountered the biggest stress I ever felt. But not only for me, my granny and Laura where at home, they couldn't do anything but wait for a phone call. My granny was looking forwards to the trip the trip for months and she thought that she would miss out on it through this.

In the end everything was fine and we are now in London. The whole journey towards here was amazingly relaxed and well scheduled.

We left Huizinge at 820am and arrived at 1100 in den Hague to pick up my passport. at 1230 we where at "de hoek van holland" where out boat departed. After eating a fish, Marriet (my cousin) arrived by train and we drove the car on the boat around 1330. At 1400 sharp the boat left. The ride became rougher as we approached the UK. Marriet even became a bit sea sick. When we arrived it looked like "the sky was coming down" water everywhere!

We had out first night in a comfy holiday in Hotel. Good proper English breakfast in the morning and we where heading for our hostel in London. At 12 o'clock we where there and at 1pm we where standing at oxford circus tube station. There, marriet had the brilliant idea to see a west end show. First option was Lion King (sold out) second Mama Mia (sold out) and third was Thriller about Michael Jackson (3 seats available on stall 7th row in the middle) and is where we went. AMAZING show!! Afterwards we went to westminster to get a pint in some kind of pub.

Now we are settled in the hostel and do we have a malaysian roommate.

Tomorrow to church leighton house and harrods :-)





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Location:Den Haag