Thursday, October 04, 2007

4 October 2007

The big news this week is that I’m going to Kenya next month! One of my friends (who is also a coworker) asked me Friday morning if I wanted to go on a trip in November. I expressed interest (everyone knows I’m a bit of a travel fiend), and he said he had a timeshare in Kenya next month. I caught another one of our friends right before she was about to go to lunch, and by that afternoon, the three of us had decided to go.

Sounds simple enough, but as with most fun things, it was a bit more complicated. We had to request the vacation days and wait for approval, and there was a bit of a panic when the ticket prices fluctuated. And then there’s the fact that the Kenyan consulate in Zurich apparently no longer exists, so we have to apply for visas through the embassy in Bern. Not a big deal, you just send your paperwork, money, and passport to them, and they send it back to you a week later with the visa. The passport just needs to be valid for six months after your trip.

Oh. Six months? Mine expires in… April. Wasn’t there something about big delays with American passport renewals or something in the news a while back? Uh oh. I called the embassy here and they assured me that the processing times for American passports being renewed through Switzerland is about three weeks. OK, whew. I just need to send in my passport, a form, two pictures, and some money (which I’ll have to do again to get my Kenyan visa, once I get my new passport back).

First things first, I went to go get new passport pictures taken. The embassy website listed the few Swiss photo places that were known to make regulation American passport pictures, so I went to the closest one. The guy sat me down, and I put on my best “I hope I don’t look terrible because I’m stuck with this picture for the next ten years” smile, and he told me to stop smiling. Swiss people aren’t allowed to smile in their passport pictures, so apparently they don’t want Americans to smile in theirs, either.

Too lazy to argue the point, I suppressed my smile (although not entirely), and thus ended up with a smirking photo that is sure to endear me to immigration officers everywhere. I went to pay and it cost 35 Swiss Francs, or about $30, using the current exchange rate (these days, I am so glad I get paid in francs instead of dollars). For two passport-size photos of me smirking!! If it hadn’t been so expensive, I would have considered getting them re-taken.

Then, I dropped the whole package off at the post office, and sent the fee to the embassy. I’m not sure how it’s done in the US, but here, they don’t want checks or cash, and I’m guessing that an online transfer is harder for them to match to the paperwork, so they want a post transfer. This entails bringing a wad of cash to the post office (because they don’t take credit or debit card, unless you keep an account with the postal service), writing down your address and the address of the recipient, and handing it over with the wad of cash (plus a $16 service charge). The post office then sends the recipient a post card verifying that you did indeed hand over the correct-sized wad of cash, and business gets taken care of. I hope.

In any case, I have to stay in Switzerland for the next few weeks, until my passport comes back, and it’s funny how restrictive it feels to say, “Oh, no, I can’t leave the country for the rest of the month.” Think positive passport thoughts for me, so that it comes back quickly, smirking picture and all, and so I can pass it along to the Kenyan embassy for my visa.

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