What is the worst, the absolute worst worst worst thing that can happen to you while traveling (besides death)? The one thing you're supposed to avoid. At. All. Costs? I'll let you think about that one for a while, and when you finish let me know if it matched up with my experience (spoiler alert: it probably does).
Our first flight was Friday afternoon from Montpellier to Birmingham, England, where we were supposed to meet my cousin and head back to her place. I don't have class Fridays, so I spent the day finishing up the food in my fridge, cleaning up, doing last-minute packing. I had to go exchange euros for pounds which was way more complicated than it needed to be. I took out 500 euros (I know, I know, too much, but I figured better too much than too little... Big. Mistake), walked to the exchange office in Centre Ville. And I waited in line. For half an hour. Then I got in and it turned out I needed a passport to complete the transaction. So, not wanting to pay for more tram tickets, I finally figured out how to use the VeloMag like I had been planning to all semester (basically a bike rental system, 50 cents an hour, they're really great), biked home, grabbed my passport, biked back, waited another half an hour, biked back again, ran up to my room, finished my packing and left for the tram to get to the bus to get to the airport to get to England.
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| Little did I know that (very odd) smile wouldn't last long |
We did it all right: we got there three hours early, went through security, got on the plane, were all excited. We were in England within the next couple hours.
And then it turned sour. Actually, no, sour is what we use to describe a lemon, what happened to me...adjectives do not exist that can accurately describe it.
We walk out of the plane and we needed our passports to get through. So I open my backpack where I had put a little travel fanny pack I borrowed from another friend that I used for my dorm room keys, wallet, money, and passport.
That's funny, it's not on top. I dug around more. Crap, I guess I left it on the plane. I ran back, it wasn't there. I dug through my backpack, Nathalie and another friend also going to England looked through theirs, I dumped my things out, the security guy went back on the plane to look.
It was gone. My passport was gone. You can't begin to understand my panic. My passport. MY. PASSPORT! screw the two months' worth of rent, forget the credit cards and the dorm key. My passport, the most important document a human being can have in today's world, was gone. My identity could be sold and stolen, the rest of my life could be haunted by this. Even now, writing about it spooks me.
So I was taken to the deportation office. Yes, I was about to be deported back to the US. I had my friends go find my cousin, because by this point she had been waiting for about an hour, maybe more, and tell her what was going on. I walked behind one of the airport workers, completely numb, trying to wrap my head around the situation. I have to cancel my cards, I have to contact the American embassy, I need to call my mom...all this was starting to register. I sat down and started bawling and frantically Skype chatting my sister. The full extent of the gravity of the situation slowly crept up on me. I just sat there and wept, a complete mess, and I didn't care. I regretted coming, I regretted everything, I hated myself for not paying more attention, for being such as idiot.
I have no clue how long I sat there, but finally the employee came back with his boss, I did my best to describe the situation. I don't remember exactly what happened, to be honest, during that time.
Then he walked by again. And...
"I think we found it." I started crying harder out of pure joy. Someone had taken it, stolen the money (two months or rent, one month's wages, almost enough to feed me for a few months... I have a whole list of these, I could go on), but left all my cards, keys, and, most importantly, my passport in the bag on the metro.
I wasn't going to be deported, my identity was still mine, I could stay in the country and I could continue my travels. I left the deportation office, found my cousin, she gave me a huge hug. She came with me to the police station where a couple of cops (English cops with the big, funny hats, I almost asked for a picture) sat us down and questioned us, wrote up a report.
They were the nicest policemen I have ever dealt with. They gave us tea (with milk...strange), they kept making jokes, poking fun at each other. I gave them my address and they made fun of that too. "153rd place, but for place you just write pl" *looks at me* "...no, I'm going to write out place." The man fully wrote everything out. At one point he took off his bullet proof vest and handed it to us: "there, feel that, and they wonder why we have bad backs." I don't know, there were a bunch of little random things they did that were amusing and helped calm me down. And it also struck me how weird their helpfulness and kindness was to me. Somehow in the last two months I had gotten used to people not even pretending to care. If this had happened in France? Psh. They wouldn't give the slightest of craps, although I may be exaggerating. They'd probably be on a cigarette/coffee/lunch break anyhow.
Best of all, I understood everything! If I had to almost be deported, I'm glad it happened in an anglophone country, at least I could coherently describe what happened, and not try to use my second-grade level French.
So, finally, at about three in the morning, we met back up with everybody, took a taxi home, and went to bed. I laid there for about an hour with my heart pounding thinking about what had just happened, and then finally fell asleep.
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