Eurotrip - Featuring The Heff

Hiya!!!

So after Oktoberfest, the four of us all returned to Hamburg to stay with Sonja. While here we managed to see a concert from The Cat Empire, explored the city and a day before I was due to leave Hamburg to visit a friend in a city called Cologne, I managed to lose my passport. This is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I've learnt a life long lesson from this experience.

Firstly, I needed a passport again and to do this I needed to travel to Berlin. I needed to somehow prove who I was by supplying all these documents - i.e birth certificate and birth certificates of one of my parents. Luckily, my parents were smart enough to ask if there was a better way than sending over their original documents. It turned out that they could just get the documents verified at an Aussie post office and a photocopy could be sent over to Berlin. Luckily I had my passport with a drivers licence and a couple bank cards on me, that proved to be very helpful. Another rule though, was that you have to have a contact that can sign a recent picture of you saying that the person in the photo was actually me. This person, as the rule was written, had to have known me for at least 12 months and either had to be an Australian citizen, or have an internationally recognised full time job. Firstly, who, when travelling, would possibly know anyone for at least 12 months? To me, this is a ridiculous and stupid rule that is insanely easy to by-pass. Luckily, Callum was still hanging around Europe and could easily come and sign then picture for me, but I have an endless amount of travelling friends who I've met on the way, who may have only had a couple days contact with me, but would have all signed the picture in a heartbeat. Bloody pen pushing idiots. All in all, it took me about a month and a half to get my passport back.

Then I was faced with the next challenge. I couldn't get back into the UK without a valid permit or visa. That was in my old passport, so I somehow had to transfer my old visa in to the new one. I ended up in Dusseldorf, the 5th or 6th biggest city in Germany trying to get my visa put into my passport. It was here that I realised that I was an illegal immigrant. When an Australian flies into a Schengen country (I'm not going to bother explaining in full detail, but there is a thing called the Schengen region which involves all the major European countries, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Greece etc...) they get a stamp in their passport, which allows the traveller to spend 90 days in a 180 day period in the Schengen region. This stamp is the Schengen visa. Because I lost my passport, my stamp was lost, and all I had now was a blank Australian passport. This, to a police officer, makes it look like I never legally came in, it's as if I sneaked in. The next problem is that unless I could prove that I did in fact get a stamp in the first place in my old passport, there is nothing they can do for me except "Stay out of trouble and don't let police catch you". Great advice Germany!! They said that if I had have photocopied the page which had the stamp on it, maybe they could have helped me.

With this information, I decided that I would flee the country as soon as possible to go somewhere I was allowed - Ireland (Which is neither in the UK or Schengen region). I flew to Ireland, and within a month had my old visa, in the new passport. This experience took me about 2 months to sort out, making the entire ordeal about 3 to 3 and a half months long. Bloody hell.

With my visa and passport in check, I was free to find a job. I decided not to find a job just yet as it was about a week until Christmas, and in the best case scenario, I would find a job before then, and I would be working Christmas day, Boxing day, New Years Eve and probably New Years day too. In the next scenario, I would have been sitting in a hostel, upset about not having a job, upset about not having a lovely family Christmas and I probably would have had pasta or a pizza from the supermarket for my Christmas dinner.

Because of this, I found myself back in bloody Hamburg to celebrate a German Christmas, a Polish Christmas and the German New Year - They call it Silvester.

I won't elaborate on my ordeal of getting the passport and visa back, but in that time I found myself starting in Hamburg - Berlin - Cologne - Hamburg - Cologne - Hamburg - Cologne - Dusseldorf - Cologne - Hamburg - London - Dublin - Kilkenny - Cork - Dingle - Dublin - London - Bruges - Hamburg.

Bloody hell.

In the next few blogs, I'll speak of my return to Hamburg, which took me through Belgium, highly alcoholic beer, Christmas, New Years, lots of nudity and most importantly, heaps of fun.

Peace!