A Romania Post

A friend told me the other day that she still had my old blog bookmarked, and that she'd always enjoyed reading it. Truth is I had always enjoyed writing it and still missed it (especially now that I'm trying to find my footing with this new one). My old blog was written while I was living in Romania and was about my experiences, as an American, trying to navigate my way through a sometimes frustrating, aggravating and crazy country.

It's been almost three years since I last posted to that blog but I still get comments. So, I thought for old times' sake I'd write a post about a typical Romanian experience.

In late May of this year my husband and I made arrangements for a Thanksgiving holiday getaway to Antigua. Of course to go to Antigua we need passports. I have a US passport with a few years left before it expires. My husband has a Romanian passport that expired this month. So of course we realized right away that he needed to get his passport renewed. He went to the Romanian consulate in New York to find out what the renewal process is and was told he'd have to fill out some forms, which would be sent to Romania, to the city that he's from, where a new passport would be created, which would then be sent to Bucharest and finally back to New York. The whole process would take three to four months! But what choice did we have, so he sent in his paperwork.

He called the next day to find out if there was any way to expedite the process and was told no. He was also told that he had just missed the May mailing so his paperwork would not even be sent to Romania until the end of June.

Anyway, we figured we had time until November until two weeks ago when while trolling around on Delta's Website, my husband found a very good fare on a non-stop flight to Romania and we decided he should go for an extended weekend. Just before buying the ticket we realized, uh oh, his passport is expired, now what?

He called the US consulate and was told he could check online to see if his passport was available for pick up -- they had no way of checking themselves. Huh? Ok, whatever, we looked up online and found the list of people whose passports had been sent from Bucharest on July 7. His name wasn't there but it was after Aug. 7 so we thought maybe the next batch would be coming any day. My husband called the consulate again and was told the next batch would be coming Aug. 22 (he was leaving on the 21). They told him he could try and track down his passport in Romania, have them hold it wherever it was and then the consulate could give him a travel document that would let him travel to Romania on an expired passport.

So he began the task of tracking his passport down. First he called the police station in Brasov, the city where he's from. They gave him the number of the correct office in Brasov to call. The passport office in Brasov was able to look up his name and told him his passport was finished and had been sent to the Bucharest office. They gave him the name of the Bucharest office but no telephone number, so he had to look that up himself. He tried calling and got no answer. He tried again and again, still no answer (very few businesses or homes in Romania have answering machines). Mind you, my husband did all this at 3 in the morning after getting home from work (he works nights).

The next day he called the New York consulate again though I'm not sure what help he expected to get. They reiterated that he should have the Bucharest office hold the passport and then come in to get the travel document. Oh, they took his phone number and told him they'd try to call the Bucharest office. Next morning early AM he called the Bucharest number and got through. They had all the passports in a bag and ready to be mailed, though they wouldn't actually mail them until the 22nd, a week away. After looking through the bag they found his passport. Yes, they could hold it for him.

He called the New York consulate later that day. Oh sorry, they said, we haven't tried the Bucharest office yet. My husband told them he'd taken care of it, when could he come in for the document and how long would it take. Come in any time during their open hours, the document would take a few minutes to prepare.

So yesterday my husband and I drove into the City (that's New York City for those of you not in the area) on a sweltering 90-plus degree day. When we got to the consulate, it was pretty full and there was no air conditioning. Fun! One older man waiting while his wife stood on line joked with me that the consulate must be broke and couldn't afford AC.

For the next 15 minutes everyone on line waited while one man had an ongoing conversation, or argument (it was hard to tell) with the one woman behind the counter. Even though the line got longer and longer, a second person never came out to help.

It took about 35 minutes or so of standing on line before my husband finally got to the front. He handed in his paperwork, paid his $65 (cash only) and then came to wait at the back of the office with me for his document to be prepared. I expected the worst, as I'd seen several people waiting 15 to 20 minutes for their documents, and there were at least three others ahead of us waiting for their documents. But luck prevailed and 10 minutes later we were finally out the door, his travel document in hand.

Of course, my husband still has to pick up his new passport in Romania. I'm glad I won't be there with him because I've had enough Romanian run-around to last me a long while!