We took a bit of a detour about half way through our trip. We took a few detours to points of interest or to satisfy the need for coffee/pastries during our journey, but this particular detour was the worst kind of out-of-the-way side trip, an impending bureaucratic nightmare, with dreams and plans suddenly receding into a black hole…
Within Europe there is an area called The Schengen Zone. It comprises 26 European states that have officially abolished passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders. This makes travelling through much of Europe a border control breeze. (It also means a very boring passport as you don’t collect stamps along the way as I did the first time I was tripping about in Europe a life time ago). Our planned festive season adventure took us into and through eight European countries, some of them, multiple times. We crossed a lot of borders and most of them were announced by me following along on Google Maps and by my ever helpful phone provider welcoming me not once, but twice each time we crossed into a different country with a jaunty and eventually annoying “Ping”, “Ping” rather than by men in booths with attitude and a great rubber-stamp wrist action. Thus, our passports, nestled quietly, unused, unstamped and virtually ignored in the front pocket of my handbag and were safe in the same way that when you are travelling you need to know where the stash of unworn undies is, you know, not mixing it with the worn underwear, but somewhere handy and secure.
I did take the passports out of my handbag when we were in a place for several days and we were wandering in the evening seeking local cuisine and fun times. I’m not so reckless as to have important documents like passports in a pocket of my handbag when they could be locked in a room, free from any threat from pickpockets or crafty squirrels.
So, back to the international jurisdiction that is The Schengen Area. All of the countries we visited were within this said Area. Well, all but one that is. It’s Friday. The Friday before New Year’s Day which is about to fall the following Tuesday. And we’ve had a lovely day, having left Vienna, Austria in the morning and journeyed south to Slovenia.
We stopped in the delightful town of Maribor on the River Dava. Lunch was a delicious local specialty of fried ravioli and several of the best coffees we encountered the whole trip while watching some unbelievable on-piste skills at a European skiing competition on an overhead screen.
The officially Guinness Book of Records sanctioned, oldest vine in the world that is still bearing grapes is in Maribor. It’s over 400 years old! Imagine still bearing fruit when you are over 400 years old! We both enjoy imbibing the odd grape juice that has undergone pressing, fermenting, bottling action so we went to pay our humble regards to this Vine Methuselah before continuing our journey to our next destination, the Plitvice National Park in Croatia.
The country that was on our itinerary that is not within The Schengen Area? It’s Croatia. We had driven about 250 kilometres to reach the Slovenia/Croatia border and the sullen man at the booth wants to see our passports. Fair enough we say and I reach for my handbag on the back seat, open the front pocket and there’s a tissue (unused), a tiny notebook (used), a pen, another pen (spare) and a lip balm (you can never have too many lip balms travelling in Europe in the winter). BUT. No passports.
So they must be in my day pack. Check all six pockets. NOPE. Must be in Ian’s day pack. Check all 27 pockets (maybe exaggerated numbers for effect here). NOPE. By now booth man is a tad impatient and waves us to a stopping point beyond the barrier and tells us to find the passports and return to the window. So we pull over and start to tear the car and the luggage in it to pieces. At the end of 25 minutes of fine-tooth-combing we have to admit defeat and head to the booth to rationally discuss the disappearing act that the two most important documents we own have pulled on us some time in the last three or four days because neither of us can remember the last time we are certain that we saw them.
In searching every square inch of our bags and the car I have unearthed a pumpkin that we bought at a roadside stall in Chawton, Hampshire just over two months before. We had wondered where the pumpkin had got to and, were we crazy (?) because we were pretty sure we bought a pumpkin and I don’t remember making that soup but maybe I did, or maybe we didn’t buy it… Anyway, ha ha. Upside. Silver lining. After all, we had found the pumpkin (so that’s what that mysterious klonk sound under my seat was every time we went round an acute bend!).
We don’t have any photos of us searching the car, or fed up border guy or the pumpkin for that matter. So here is one more of pretty Maribor and the River Dava.
Our holiday though was disappearing into thin air. All our accommodation except for our final night, which was still a week and a half away, was booked and paid for. We were on the wrong side of the Slovenia/ Croatia border and booth guy was adamant. Go to Ljubljana, he tells us, where there are British and Australian Consulates which close in an hour, oh and it is at least an hour and a half drive away but, and I’ll quote Gandalf here “You shall not pass!” I was more like the opening dialogue of “Four Weddings and a Funeral’ with my quoting. We tried to ring both consulates, but at 3.30 on a Friday afternoon every ex-pat Aussie or Brit working at either embassy is clearly at Friday drinks and not picking up. I got an incoherent recorded message babbled in excellent Slovenian and repeated in garbled hyper-speed English. Ian was able to speak to a cruisy British fellow whose turn it was to nurse the after-hours mobile but with zero interest in his plight. We had no choice but to head to a police station to report the loss of our passports. There was not a police station open for miles so we decided, seeing as we were headed for the capital anyway, that we were sure to find one when we got there. Ljubljana Police Headquarters was punched into Google maps and we headed away from the border and that’s when it really hit us. We couldn’t go on without passports and so we would be stuck until they were re-issued. We had a weekend and at least one public holiday in the way of any re-issuing. Presumably if the embassies in Ljubljana were issuing the passports we would need to be in Ljubljana to get them and so huge swathes of our planned trip would be lost. So I started to cry. I’m sure everyone reading this understands that crying was a completely valid response to the thought of missing out on the beautiful Plitvice National Park and New Year’s Eve in Venice and plenty of other perfectly splendid planned adventures.
Deep breaths and we always had the pumpkin if I needed anything to distract me from having to turn up to a foreign police headquarters to report the loss of two passports under circumstances that were a total mystery to both of us. We are not irresponsible people. Well we hadn’t been up until this particular moment. Reading all the guff on the consulate websites is terrifying and we knew it was going to be expensive and we would have to recalibrate the word “inconvenient’” to express just how bad the next week was going to be.
Still, we had no choice so we drove the 150 kilometres to the very handily located carpark opposite the Ljubljana Police Station. I suggested that before we went inside we should pull the car apart one more time and start rehearsing what we were going to tell them as we had no idea in which country, little own which city, we misplaced or had stolen, our passports.
We dragged our respective bags out of the boot and shook each individual item. Ian took his bag to the back seat and removed each article in order to thoroughly check the contents. He pulled out his toiletries bag and shoved it on the back parcel shelf to give himself more room in the suitcase and on the seat to completely search every square inch. I’d finished my bag search and was thinking of applying for a job with some Border Force organisation because I was super thorough, even if I do say so myself. Trying to make my vague story into something plausible in my head, I reached distractedly for the toiletries bag. You know toiletries bags, the place you put things that might leak or spill onto your luggage and be messy or damp. Not the sort of place anybody would store one or two passports.
So what the f*^# were our passports doing in Ian’s toiletries bag? Do you know, weeks later and Ian is still trying to fathom in what weird and wonderful scenario that could happen and he hasn’t come up with anything logical yet. All I know is that I was so relieved that I didn’t even have the urge to punch him in the nose (I’m not naturally violent). We cancelled our hastily arranged accommodation in Slovenia, made contact with our host in Croatia, gave a new ETA and set off for the border once more with feeling and rejoiced that all our almost-up-in-smoke plans were now firmly back on the agenda. Of course we couldn’t get the barrier on the carpark to raise and we couldn’t read the Slovenian instructions that kept flashing menacingly at us. The line of waiting drivers in the cars that queued up behind us were remarkably patient and a lovely local led Ian to the machine at the entrance to the carpark on the street and yet another kind local persuaded the machine to take the card after it refused it from my clearly unworthy hand and we were on our way.
We arrived at our Airbnb at 10pm to a very understanding (and quite tipsy) host after a journey of nearly 670 kilometres, a mere 230 of which were, as it turned out, completely unnecessary.
But hey, we found the pumpkin. (It was delicious by the way.)
(Ian assures me that one day he will be able to laugh about this incident but that it could take some time and I should get back to him in four or five years.)
Now on to Part 2 of Hot Wines & Clementines
Or back to Part 1 of Hot Wines & Clementines