on passports, sweden, slovakia, etc.
Today's big news: I fly out of Ferihegy (the BP airport) at 7 tonight for Sweden(!!!). I'm meeting up in Stockholm with my friend Ashley, from Pomona, since we both have a friday with no class. As a lucky coincidence, this is also the first of three nights of the Swedish Beer, Whiskey, and Cider festival... it will definitely be a fun trip.
I'm also a little excited (more than I should be, at any rate) about getting another passport stamp. Admittedly, the ones I do have aren't nearly as exciting as I expected (it should be made clear at this point that prior to this semester, I'd never been anywhere you needed a passport to go). For whatever reason, I just always assumed that passport stamps would be colorful, like postage stamps or something (actually, my roommate and some friends are going to Egypt, for which they needed visas, and the visas contained what looked like postage stamps, so go figure), when in fact, they're pretty boring--indistinguishable across national borders, they have a little letter for the country of origin instead of a seal or something, etc.
Despite this small disillusionment, I'd still like to accumulate some stamps while I'm here. I had the first opportunity to do so last Sunday, when we went to Esztergom in northern Hungary. Admittedly, "northern Hungary" is a little bit ridiculous when the train trip took a total of an hour and a half (considering BP is right in the center of the country... although I haven't checked, I have a feeling Colorado is significantly larger). True to the mentality we've seen of Hungarian culture, Esztergom boasts Europe's second largest church (let's just say this country has a bit of a problem with the old inferiority complex about how cool stuff is... the postal museum also boasts the world's third largest collection of postcards).
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because Esztergom also has a bridge across the Danube into Slovakia. Also interesting is that the bridge was blown up by the fleeing German army in 1944 (45?), and was only rebuilt in 2001 or so. But again, I digress. My friends and I, being passport stamp-whores, decided that we would cross the bridge and ask the Slovakian border guards for a stamp. We walked over, held out our passports, and the guy took them from us. He walked back to his guard station, scanned them, held them up to the light to look at the holograms, stamped them... and then handed them to the guard we had thought was Hungarian (frankly, their respective uniforms aren't particularly distinguishable) but was actually Slovakian--we had just been stamped out of Hungary, and we had to get scanned, etc. again to enter Slovakia. Afterwards, they gave us our passports back, and my friend Kelly turned to go back.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked the guard.
"Home?" she said.
As it turned out, we had to walk down to the next intersection, cross the street, and go through the whole thing over again, during which our student visas received particularly close scrutiny, before they let us back in. And I'd say we all learned something that day: don't be a passport stamp-whore. Have at least something in mind to do while in the other country, so you don't feel like such an idiot, taking fifteen minutes and picking up four stamps when you only really wanted one. On the plus side, I don't feel nearly as naked taking the Esztergom-Sturovo-stamped thing with me to Stockholm.
Szia!
sam
I'm also a little excited (more than I should be, at any rate) about getting another passport stamp. Admittedly, the ones I do have aren't nearly as exciting as I expected (it should be made clear at this point that prior to this semester, I'd never been anywhere you needed a passport to go). For whatever reason, I just always assumed that passport stamps would be colorful, like postage stamps or something (actually, my roommate and some friends are going to Egypt, for which they needed visas, and the visas contained what looked like postage stamps, so go figure), when in fact, they're pretty boring--indistinguishable across national borders, they have a little letter for the country of origin instead of a seal or something, etc.
Despite this small disillusionment, I'd still like to accumulate some stamps while I'm here. I had the first opportunity to do so last Sunday, when we went to Esztergom in northern Hungary. Admittedly, "northern Hungary" is a little bit ridiculous when the train trip took a total of an hour and a half (considering BP is right in the center of the country... although I haven't checked, I have a feeling Colorado is significantly larger). True to the mentality we've seen of Hungarian culture, Esztergom boasts Europe's second largest church (let's just say this country has a bit of a problem with the old inferiority complex about how cool stuff is... the postal museum also boasts the world's third largest collection of postcards).
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because Esztergom also has a bridge across the Danube into Slovakia. Also interesting is that the bridge was blown up by the fleeing German army in 1944 (45?), and was only rebuilt in 2001 or so. But again, I digress. My friends and I, being passport stamp-whores, decided that we would cross the bridge and ask the Slovakian border guards for a stamp. We walked over, held out our passports, and the guy took them from us. He walked back to his guard station, scanned them, held them up to the light to look at the holograms, stamped them... and then handed them to the guard we had thought was Hungarian (frankly, their respective uniforms aren't particularly distinguishable) but was actually Slovakian--we had just been stamped out of Hungary, and we had to get scanned, etc. again to enter Slovakia. Afterwards, they gave us our passports back, and my friend Kelly turned to go back.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked the guard.
"Home?" she said.
As it turned out, we had to walk down to the next intersection, cross the street, and go through the whole thing over again, during which our student visas received particularly close scrutiny, before they let us back in. And I'd say we all learned something that day: don't be a passport stamp-whore. Have at least something in mind to do while in the other country, so you don't feel like such an idiot, taking fifteen minutes and picking up four stamps when you only really wanted one. On the plus side, I don't feel nearly as naked taking the Esztergom-Sturovo-stamped thing with me to Stockholm.
Szia!
sam
posted by sam at
6:12 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home