Passport (Dis)Services

I wanted to give everybody an update on my passport situation. For those who may not know, my current passport was, well... full. Entirely. As in, last time I entered the UK they had to stamp over a previous UK entry stamp. I am pretty proud, actually, and my country count, though not my stamp count, is up to 30. So I want to 1) keep my passport as a souvenir; 2) didn't want to have to pay for another passport; and 3) didn't want to go through the hassle of trying get another UK visa for a new passport. Soooo a couple months ago, I sent in my passport to the Consulate here in Edinburgh so that they could put more pages in it (they can do that!!).

I get a friendly email explaining to me that my passport is in such poor condition that they cannot, in fact, put extra pages in it and that I will have to get another one, which will take 2 weeks. Well, I was traveling to Amsterdam in less than 2-weeks time, so I just asked if they could send it back to me as is. They agreed, with the frustrated caveat that "They may not take my passport at the airport" because of its condition. I thought very long and hard about sending them an email in return explaining that I had been using this passport in this condition for years without any problem, before deciding that taunting the customs people may not in my best interest, as someone who would like to return.

I suspect, in all honesty, that it was my fun little stamp from Cuba that raised their hackles at the Consulate, and not actually the condition of the passport. I have misplaced the letter from Semester at Sea explaining that I traveled there legally.

Soooooo, after some more travel, the room situation in my passport became increasingly cramped, so I decided to try again. I began this mission by effectively gluing my photo page back to the rest of the document, which I suppose may have influenced its previous rejection. I'm pretty sure that's not entirely legal, in the technical sense, but I see no harm in emergency passport surgery. Whatever. So I head up to the Consulate, conveniently not including an email address with a further inconvenience of having a US contact number on the application in hopes that they would simply give me the pages without attempting to track me down and bring me in. Well, it seemed to have worked, because this morning there's a buzz at the building door: the postman with a package! It's my passport, wonderfully thicker than it was only 2 days ago. AND to top it off, they inserted the pages right next to my Cuba stamp. Hmmmm.... I feel as if perhaps the Consular officers are trying to tell me something. Oops.

BUT I get to keep the passport, so I suppose I'll have future opportunities to be detained by customs for my illicit stamps.