Our son has been the traveler from the day he left the hospital. We managed to travel with him around 10 times through the non-existing Polish-German border and it never crossed our mind that he should get some travel documents e.g. a passport. Rita and Leon got even once stopped on the border but somehow Leon was ignored - only potential cigarettes smuggling was of interested to the guys on the border. Anyway it would have probably continued like that for some time but Leon was to have his first real trip to far north to Oulu in Finland. Therefore we bought the plane tickets and somehow forgot to consider how are we going to check him in since he has no papers. At some point - exactly seven days before the flight and additionally right before Easter I decided to go to the passport office in Warsaw to get him the passport. There I learned that it takes two months before he gets all the papers so that he can apply for the passport and then an additional month before they issue it. Additionally since I showed up with him I almost got arrested since I could not explain how he made it to Poland since he was born in Germany...Things started looking very bad - basically the only way for him to have a Polish passport in time for the flight was to smuggle him back to Germany to get him a temporary passport from the Polish Embassy there...Fortunately we tried the Hungarian path - those guys did not inquire how he got to Poland - neither wanted any special documents and with kind help of the Embassy staff who took care of the issue outside office hours he got his Hungarian passport just in time for the flight!!! Btw - the Hungarians issue the first passport for free to its new citizens - in Poland after three months it is going to be around 200 EUR altogether.
I should also propose a special award to the Polish authorities for their stupidity since the first step in the process is to get him a Polish birth certificate even though he has European Union which is recognized in whole EU but somehow not in Poland -I kind of though Poland is in EU but perhaps those guys did not notice it yet. All in all takes a month just for this step of the procedure.
On the picture the result of the very stressful process - Rita with Leon in the sling on the main square in Oulu. Next time we are there he will get a picture with the Santa Claus!!! I must say the little guy enjoyed flying very much. It probably felt like heaven for him because he was fed every 45 minutes...
Last thing - the most interesting picture so far I have found on my bro's blog - the VERVET MONKEY
or you can also google it as BLUE BALL MONKEY - magnified reason for the name below :)
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