On our way back from a European ski vacation I managed to misplace my passport after going through security. When I tried to go through passport control at our connecting airport I discovered it was missing. Panic! Amazingly, with help from our airline representative and a friendly fellow from US Homeland Security stationed at the airport I got on my plane and made it home without missing a beat. But for a while there I thought I had a few unexpected days in Germany trying to get the documentation in place for a new passport from the US Consulate.
So, any lost/stolen passport stories? Maybe help me feel less like an idiot?
My wife had to deal with a lost passport case when we were posted in Portugal. The guy had been sitting on a park bench in Madrid when another man sat down at the other end. The man spoke English and told the future victim that he enjoyed talking to Americans to improve his skills. They chatted for a while in the hot sun, and when the time was right, the con man took a bottle of Coke out of his backpack, appeared to open it, and offered some to the American in a cup that he also had.
When the poor sap woke up an hour later, his passport and money were gone, but he still had his airline ticket, which included a plane change in Portugal. Since he couldn’t get on a USA-bound plane without the passport, he became my wife’s problem (as duty officer) when he arrived in Lisbon.
You might be interested in this article from the 2/22/15 Minneapolis StarTribune: Lessons of a lost passport.
Frankly if it were me, I’d be freaking out, although we travel with copies of the front page and keep a copy at home with a reliable relative. So far, no problems…
Oh, I was. But when the Homeland Security rep showed up (about 15 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave) he took my drivers license, called up the images of my passport on his phone, verified my identity, and walked me through passport control right up to the plane. I was amazed that it happened so quickly and effortlessly.
But the 90 minutes between discovering my passport was missing and the guy showing up were not pretty.
A friend of mine has one that starts with a weekend trip from Ireland to the Vatican, proceeds through being beaten up on a train and having his passport (and everything else) stolen, and ends with his being arrested on suspicion of terrorism.
I had to spend an extra 30 minutes going through US Immigration and Border Security. The interrogation mostly consisted of me watching the agent asking another agent how to properly fill out the forms. But I don’t have a cool story to tell.
My husband was visiting relatives in Russia and Ukraine several years ago. He had foolishly packed his passport in his luggage. He and a cousin were waiting at an airport or train station in Moscow, I forget which, and he went to use the toilet, leaving the cousin to guard the luggage.
The cousin was none too bright, I guess, and guarded the luggage by walking back and forth in front of the line of suitcases and bags. Meanwhile, a somewhat smarter person grabbed the suitcase at one end of the line as soon as the cousin turned his back. Of course that was the one containing his passport.
My husband had to get a new passport and visa issued there in Moscow. To make things worse, this was the EXACT week on which the USSR disintegrated, and it was IIRC a Friday. He spent the entire day rushing madly from one office to another.
The following year he was traveling again, and was questioned at more than one border crossing about why an American citizen born in Ukraine had a passport issued in Moscow.
I was braced pretty thoroughly when I left Belgium after living there for two years. I had worked extensively in eastern Europe during that time, traveling on a US Official Passport (something less than diplo, but more than a normal passport). However, when I was working a job in Sofia, we took several trips to Istanbul to see the sights and do some shopping, and I used my tourist passport for that. The Belgian security folks really wanted to know just what it was that I was doing in Turkey and why I made so many trips there, and why I entered from Bulgaria. I nearly missed my flight while trying to explain my tangled situation.
Brussels, on a Saturday morning. I was waiting for the train to the airport to fly back to Canada with a US passport. When the short train stopped much further down the platform than I expected, I rushed after it, leaving my shoulder bag on the bench. I doubled back at the next station, but of course it was too late and my bag was gone with my laptop and passport inside.
The train station office wasn’t very helpful, so I went to the airport anyway to deal with the airline and file the police report there. Then it was back to my hotel to check in again and try to figure everything out using the hotel computer and my PDA (remember those?). The kind staff of the boutique hotel made me sandwiches.
On the bright side, being in Brussels meant that the US Embassy was within walking distance. They wouldn’t be open until Monday, but I could still make an appointment over the phone.
So, I show up on Monday with my forms already filled out and my new passport photos. When my number is called, the guy goes to the back and brings out my bag. Someone had found it in a trash can with everything still there except for the electronics, saw the passport, and turned it in at the embassy.
It was less expensive to buy a new plane ticket than to change my old one. And even less to book a round trip and abandon the return flight to Brussels a week later.
My mother has a fairly boring one: bag stolen on the Prague metro. The guy just snatched it right off her and ran away. She lost her passport and her wallet. And it was Easter weekend, so nothing was open. She called my dad, who dealt with the credit cards from the other end, but she had to go make a police report (speaking almost no Czech) and wait around for a couple of days for the US Embassy to reopen so they could issue a new passport. It wasn’t a huge deal, though. I don’t think being robbed on the Prague metro is a terribly uncommon occurrence.
A friend had his passport stolen in Istanbul and was able to get a new one from the US Consulate. The only form of ID he had was an expired University of Nevada ID.
My mother got an e-mail from my sister saying she’d had her passport and her money stolen and was trapped in London so would Mom please wire some money, but my mother had just talked to my sister at her home in Nevada…oh, wait, that’s not what your looking for, huh?
My daughters first solo trip was a week in Paris. She somehow managed to lose her passport between the airport and the hostel.
It was a huge deal for her, during her teenage years she was always very emotional and not the type of person you’d expect to pull it together in a crisis. She cried on the phone while telling me about it but within a few minutes was making a plan. She still has what she calls the worlds most expensive passport. The reissue cost of getting it at the Paris embassy plus what they charged her to receive faxes from Canada with her birth certificate and other info was a little higher than she was expecting.
It’s now a family punchline, particularly since the friends of mine that she used as contacts were woken up very early in the morning with questions like “what hospital was she born at” “what colour is her hair” (Favorite answer - This week?) and what is her major (same answer as her hair at the time)
She managed to enjoy her trip and other than spending a day of her 6 day vacation and most of her budgeted spending money at the embassy it all turned out okay.
Embassies normally require more verification than that. What they normally do is have you call a relative back in the states and have them fax a copy of your birth certificate or other identification proving you are who you say you are. When traveling outside the US (or wherever your home country is), you should have your passport, a scanned copy of your passport in your suitcase, and a copy left with next of kin. It makes things so much easier in the event of a problem. Sadly, almost nobody does this.
The only times I’ve lost my passport-equivalent national ID “in the wild” it was with my wallet. Twice it had fallen out of my pocket in my car. The last time was a few months ago: it fell down in a taxi and the cabbie found it a couple of days later when he was cleaning the car. Seeing that one of the cards was for his own bank, he used the bank as a go-between to contact me.
But my mother. Alas, my mother! We just happen to have incompatible ideas of what “orderly” means. Last week, I had a small pile of “things that need to go into the suitcase” on an auxiliary table; first I select the items, then I put it in the suitcase; my mother OTOH keeps the suitcase open for up to a week and piles up things inside. So anyway, I come back from going out for bread and where are the Things? Mooooooom! Yes dear? Where is the hat and the clothing that was there? Oh, I put it away! …
So. Years ago, I had this small box where I kept Travel Stuff. Passport. Half of my bank cards. Electric adapters. And Mom saw it. And opened it, to see what was inside. And decided that it was “a mess”, since she couldn’t see what all those items had in common. So she put everything away. We still haven’t found that passport. She’s lost me two passports and a national ID. After the second passport, whenever we’re going to be together I keep all my IDs on my person at all times except when showering or sleeping - and when I shower, they’re in the bathroom with me!
I lived in Singapore for a couple of years in the '90s. One day, I discovered that my passport was missing, which was a shame because I had some sort of international trip planned for the following weekend. What was even worse was that my wallet had been stolen several months prior, which meant I had absolutely no ID whatsoever once my passport was gone. I called the embassy in a panic and learned that I’d left it in a cab and the driver was kind enough to turn it in at the embassy. They were a little eye-rolly when I arrived to pick it up with no other ID, but I got it back and was able to go on whatever trip I had planned.
What really sucked was having to re-take the test for my driver’s license when I moved back to the States the next year. I was woefully out of practice.
This sort of qualifies, I guess. A couple of years ago, my wife and I went to see Wicked in NYC. On the way into the theatre, I saw something fall out of a man’s pocket. I picked it up, saw that it was a passport, caught up with him, and gave it back. He seemed quite shocked and relieved at the same time.
Went to the post office today to report apply for my replacement - hope it all goes smoothly. The clerk wasn’t sure that my birth certificate was complete enough (didn’t have my parents’ names on it) but hopefully my previous cancelled passport is enough.