There's No Crying at the Embassy

We got back from Amsterdam Sunday night. Yesterday morning I woke up and immediately headed out to my appointment at the US Embassy. I needed more pages put in my passport, one of those strange realities that comes with living abroad and traveling a lot. When you first get a passport you can’t imagine filling all the pages, now I am on my second refill. My appointment was for 9:30am and I was called to the first window at 10am, not too bad. After turning in my passport and paying the $82 fee I sat down to wait. And wait. I happened to sit behind two people who were strangers when they arrived at the embassy but were besties by the time they left. By the time their wait was over they were making plans to email each other and go out with their respective partners. I mean seriously, besties. The first thing I heard them talking about, because I eavesdropped my entire wait, were the Mexican food options in London. That’s about right, and typical of two Americans living here. They then proceeded to talk travel plans, also typical, with the woman saying she’ll NEVER fly Ryanair again (a sentiment I echo) but that Easyjet has gotten a bit better, but still isn’t great. I guess I agree with that, although I do like the fact you can pick seats now, and we have never had a bad experience with them (I know, just wait...), so overall they are ok in my book. 

There were quite a few kids in the waiting room, including about four newborn babies getting their first passports. With many kids and babies comes a lot of crying. A saw one boy, about three, fall on the ground and start to cry. His mom took him and his brother to the vending machine to get a snack and while there I heard her tell him “you’ve got to keep yourself together. Everyone’s staring at you.” I half expected her to start shaking his shoulders while yelling, “KEEP IT TOGETHER, DAMMIT.” The strain of embassy wait times was clearly starting to show.

I was told my wait would be about an hour, in reality it took one hour and 45 minutes for them to sew in additional pages. I think in embassy speak a 45 minute difference is completely negligible. In total I was there two hours and 15 minutes, but it’s over and done with and I can continue to travel. Seeing as how you can get your passport back the same day, going into the embassy to get additional pages is well worth it. Not to say I’d like to do it again anytime soon, but it could have been worse, or it could have taken 2-3 weeks in the mail. A few hours of crying babies, stressed parents and error ridden BBC closed captioning (“word flew” - the lesser known strain of bird flu) is tolerable every few years.