Passport Drama

We leave in less than a month, and I still have not applied for my passport.

Now, this is not for a lack of trying. I went to my local post office nearly a month ago to apply for my passport, but was told that I had the wrong birth certificate. After dealing with a similar experience a few months ago with the BMV here in Bloomington, I thought I had straitened out all possible problems with my birth certificate. But it appears that the certificate that is good enough for the BMV is not good enough for the Federal Government. So I had to apply for a new one from the Texas Health and Vital Statistics Office.

I was told that the process should take between 10 and 15 business days, so I was sure that I would have my birth certificate in time to apply for my passport without having to expedite it. However, it has now been nearly a month and I have still not received it. I have called the Texas Health and Vital Statistics Office several times, and had a variety of experiences. The first lady that helped me was completely useless, and told me it could take 4 to 6 weeks to get my birth certificate (mind you, this was after she told me I would be receiving it "any day now"). So, I called again a few days later. This next more helpful lady gave me the name of the "Processor" who is working on my request, and transfered me to his office. But of course, I got his voice mail (hmm...maybe the reason I haven't got my birth certificate yet is because he's not in his office at 11:00 in the morning on a Tuesday?). I left a voice mail, informed him that I was in a hurry because I needed to get a passport, and I was leaving in a month. He never called me back.

So, I called again. This third lady offered, once again, to transfer me to his voice mail (I guess he's not in his office at 1:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday either), but I told her that I had already left him a message to no avail. So she offered to send him a complaint email that he is required to respond to within three days, and it is "frowned upon" if he takes more than 24 hours. Right now I am awaiting that response.

There are companies that can "hand deliver" your passport and get it to you in 24-48 hours, so I doubt that I will have to cancel the trip or anything. However, these services cost $200 or more depending on how fast you need it, in addition to the normal cost of getting a passport (more than $100). It seems to me that if I don't get my birth certificate soon, Texas Health and Vital Statistics should pay for my expediting fees, since it would be their fault that I needed to expedite in the first place. But somehow I doubt they'll agree to that...

Our Plans, Tentatively

Well, most of our travel plans are set in stone as of right now, so here's a run-down of where we'll be and when.

• Our flight leaves Houston at 9:55 PM on May 14. We have a layover in Paris, and we'll finally arrive in Berlin the next day at 5:40 PM.
• We have to check in to our hostel, Schlafmeile, by 9:00 PM. Here's a link to the some photos of it on the hostel's website. We'll be staying in a room with three other people, but the room has its own bathroom in the room, so that will be nice.
• We're going to be in Berlin through May 21. On the 21st at 7:58 PM we board a high-speed overnight train at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Berlin's main train station) to Paris. We'll arrive in Paris the next morning at 9:30 AM.
• Our hostel in Paris is called Le Montclair Montmartre. They have a video that you can watch to see what the place looks like. At this hostel we have our own private room, but we have to share a bathroom with the floor. That should be an experience!
• On May 26, we take the same train back to Berlin at 8:20 PM from Paris's Gare de l'Est (East Station), arriving in Berlin at 9:02 AM on the 27th.
• This last night in Berlin, we decided to stay in a hotel near the airport. It is called the Dorint Hotel. It was cheap, but it will still be nice to spend the last day in our own room with a shower, etc.!
• On May 28, we leave from Berlin's Tegel Airport at 12:45 PM. There is a layover in Paris, and then we'll arrive in Houston by 7:45 PM that night (the time change is going to kill us!).

This is a rough outline of where we'll be and when. Of course, we hope to see a lot of awesome stuff in between all the traveling! We'll try to post here as often as possible so everyone can keep track of what we're doing.