Where in the World is Paul?: You might be a traveler if...

Guess which one is mine...

For those of you who are not familiar with my travels of the past year, a little history.

I just got my first passport last January. I had traveled previously, mainly to Canada or one of the islands, but never needed a passport (all pre-9/11). So this was something exciting for me. I loved getting my first stamp on the relocation trip!

Well, I ended up traveling a little bit more than initially anticipated. Fortunately, a lot of the travels were to countries who were part of the Schengen Agreement which basically means I do not need to go through border/passport control when traveling between two countries who are part of the agreement, thus not getting stamped. However, I did make a few trips to countries that do have border control, Czech Republic, Ireland and UK.

Side note on Ireland and the U.K. They signed the Schengen Agreement, but do not participate in the open borders. I have also found, outside of the US, they can ask the most questions of anyone and make entry to the country feel a little bit like getting past the guards in "The Neverending Story". You have to solve the riddle before they let you in. In addition, Ireland uses a stamp that takes up an entire page of the passport.

Well, all of this travel, plus losing two whole pages to my German Resident Visa, put me in a little bit of a situation by the end of October. I counted the number of empty pages and realized that only a few more trips and I was going to be out of room. So, within 10 months of receiving my first ever passport, I had to have pages added to it. This did present a problem as I live in Germany, so getting the passport to the passport agency and back was not going to be a short process and it is rare that two weeks go by without me legitimately needing my passport.

Fortunately, on a business trip to the US I was able to get it to an agency to expedite it for me. When they received it, they decided that not only did I need to have a book of pages added to it, but I probably should have 2 books of pages added!

As you can see below, it adds a little bit of heft to ye old travel book. Some have looked at it and called it "dodgy", and it did cause a little bit of a stir the first time I was in Costa Rica, but after 5 people looked at it and examined the seams, they let me leave the country...