Tag Archives: passport

Never come to Holland again with this passport

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DURING THE 1980s, I used to drive from my home in Kent through Europe to Hungary and Yugoslavia. I used to take the car across the sea on the Olau Line that ran between Sheerness in Kent and Vlissingen in Holland. In those days, I held an old-style UK passport. With hard covers, it was dark blueish black. On the front cover, there was a coat of arms embossed in gold and words in gold lettering mentioning it was a British passport. There were two horizontal slots in the front cover. These were lined with white paper. On one of them, the passport holder’s name was written by hand, and on the other, the passport number.

I used to carry my passport in my trouser pocket. So with time, it gradually got a bit bent as it pressed against my leg. Another thing that happened was that the gold coat of arms and the gold lettering wore so thin that they were barely visible. Likewise, my name on the cover also began to become less distinct.

At various demanding frontiers, such as the borders to Communist countries such as Albania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, the tatty appearance of my passport was of no concern to the often-over-zealous border officials. However, it did cause trouble in a place where I least expected it.

On one occasion, after disembarking at Vlissingen, I handed my passport to the Dutch immigration official. He looked at it, and then wandered away with it. About 10 minutes later, he returned with it, holding it gingerly by one of its corners. As he handed it to me, he said:

“Next time you are coming in Holland, you must have a new passport.”

Clearly my passport’s appearance was not in harmony with the Dutch sense of tidiness and orderliness.

An out of date passport and a different world

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OFTEN WHEN ONE IS SEARCHING for something, something, which you were not looking for, comes to light. A day or so ago, one of my old passports was discovered. It is an old-fashioned, blue-covered book with barely a trace of the wording and crest that used to be on the cover. I used to carry my passport in a trouser pocket, which rubbed against it and gradually denuded the cover. The ten-year document expired on the 19th of March 1990. This was a couple of months before I made my last trip to what was still known as ‘Yugoslavia’. Soon after that, civil wars erupted, and the country became divided into smaller independent units.

The passport gives my height but not my eye colour, which used to be recorded in earlier passports. It contains eight Hungarian visa stamps (one is illustrated above), all issued in London except for one which was affixed in Belgrade. There is also a Bulgarian visa stamp, which was issued in March 1983. In addition to these visa stamps, for which I was charged roughly $10 each, there are many border stamps – entry and exit. Most of these are for Hungary and Yugoslavia, which I visited frequently throughout the 1980s. In those days, Brits did not need a visa to enter Yugoslavia.

One of the border stamps is of special interest. It was issued when I entered Yugoslavia at Bozaj on the 5th of June 1984. Bozaj, now in the Republic of Montenegro, was a Yugoslav border post on the shore of Lake Shkodra. The stamp was placed in my passport a few minutes after leaving the Albanian border post, also beside the lake, at Han-i-Hotit. It was here that an Albanian entry stamp was put in my passport two weeks earlier when I visited the country, which was then even far more mysterious than North Korea is to us today. In 1984, the Stalinist regime headed by Enver Hoxha was still in place. The two weeks spent in Albania were both fascinating and unusual to say the least. I have described that holiday in my book “Albania on My Mind.”

In addition to the visas and stamps issued by socialist countries, there is one Greek entry and one exit stamp, both issued at Athens airport in August 1981. It seems that I was in Greece from the 11th to the 17th. Another stamp issued on the 13th by the Piraeus branch of the National Bank of Greece takes up most of one page and has something to do with money and traveller’s cheques, but my Greek is not up to translating it.

The accidental finding of this old passport brings back many happy memories of travelling in parts of Europe that have now changed beyond recognition – for better or for worse.                                                                                                 

Sad to leave, glad to return

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AT THE END of a four day stay in Venice, a city, which I have loved ever since my early childhood days, I felt sad at the prospect of departure for home. Wandering about the city brought back happy memories of visits there with my parents as well as giving me the chance to experience familiar sights and to make new discoveries. Although Venice is a little overrun with tourists, its history as a gateway to points further east remains fascinating and evocative. So, the anticipation of leaving filled me with sadness.

We left Venice on a waterbus, which arrived punctually and was not overcrowded. After a lovely 70 minute voyage, which included stops at the Lido, the Fondamente Nove, and a couple of stops on the island of Murano (famous for its glass production), we arrived at Marco Polo Airport. And that is where our journey became wearying.

First, we had to queue to reach the baggage depositing facility for our airline Easyjet. Next, we discovered that our departure would be delayed by about 30 minutes. Then, we sat in a crowded waiting area without knowing from which gate we would be boarding our ‘plane. It was important to know this because there are two sets of passport control points, each leading to a separate set of gates. Once the gate was announced, another queue. This time, we had to wait (not too long) to have stamps placed in our non-EU passports. On arrival at the departure gate, we were told that boarding was beginning. What this meant was that everybody had to stand up, to show our boarding passes, and then to stand in a long sloping corridor for at least 10 minutes before we were invited on-board. The 1 hour 55 minute flight to London’s Gatwick Airport was pleasant, although delayed.

At Gatwick, we disembarked at a point distant from the immigration hall. The latter was reached after a good 15 minute walk. The passport control area was chock-full of people, some of them inebriated. Unlike in the EU, where EU and non-EU passport holders are separated, at Gatwick (and Heathrow), both kinds of passport holders and those from several other countries (e.g., Australia, NZ, and Japan) queue together to use the automated passport checking machines. The process, which might save spending on labour costs, is not user-friendly. Many passengers had difficulty using the machines and had to be helped by other passengers and a few members of airport staff. Fortunately, because it had taken so long to get through the immigration control, our suitcase had arrived in the baggage collection hall.

After one more short, but fast-moving queue, we reclaimed our car keys, and soon began the 1 hour drive home. Although I was so sad leaving Venice, after the many hours spent at airports and the numerous lines in which we waited, I was glad to be home. Years ago, when I was a child, leaving wherever we had spent our holiday was always sad, but even worse was returning to everyday routines of school and life in the staid Hampstead Garden Suburb, where we lived.