Where's our passport?

September 25
As you might remember Alan and I forgot to get our Indian Visa in NYC and have been on an adventure to try and obtain it in Italy ever since. For the week we were at the hotel in the mountains in the back of our minds we were wondering when our passport would turn up. It was supposed to arrive Tuesday. Wednesday we emailed Fabio, our contact at the Milan Indian Embassy. We heard back from him that everything was fine and we would receive it the next day. Thursday passed. Friday, crunch time, the hotel closes for the season on Saturday and we have to be out early that day and had been planning to head to Greece. We got on the phone with Fabio, he was so sorry, it was not his fault but our passports were in a town outside Naples just under 2 hours away, he promised several times that he was positive they were there, he emailed directions and we had no choice but to hop in our rental car and head West. Alan had a bad feeling about this day from the start, I tried to make light of the situation, I mean at least our passports were not still in Milan!

About an hour and a half later we are making good time, but cannot seem to find the place. (Alan forgot to get the name of where were we going so we were just going by the address). Most of Italy does not believe in street signs, house numbers or any form of identification to help you know where you are and where you need to go. It turns out our address was for the town center and what we thought was the house number is actually the zip code. We found a coffee shop that looked friendly enough in this rough industrial town on the outskirts of Naples. Through a long conversation with an Italian who spoke no English, Alan received a hand drawn map with directions to TNT courier service (how he managed to communicate that we were looking for an express mail delivery service is beyond me).

We find the place easily with our map and experience all the relief and anticipation for this long awaited event--we are getting our passports! We walk inside this massive Italian Fed Ex type building and hand the woman behind the counter our information, they cannot find us. We get Fabio on the phone, he talks to them because not everything can be communication through their broken English and our lack of Italian. They finally find our tracking number. The guy behind the counter looks at us...."Problem...on truck," holding his hands up as if on a steering wheel. Our passports were on a trunk on its way to Isernia, a town 25 minutes east of our hotel. The TNt rep promised that the passports would be there but we had to go pick them up. They could not be delived before Monday morning.



Damn Murphy and his crazy Law!



So back in the car...tempers flaring! An hour and a half back to where we started. The day ended with another Fabio. Fabio from TNT smiled at us when we walked in, handed us out package and offered us a coffee. Thanks.



Lessoned learned!


--MIKA