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Friday 2004-05-07 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands
No Passport!
Yesterday I’d checked with the visa agency in Amsterdam and arranged with them that I could (finally) pick up my passport this afternoon. That way I can make a photocopy of all the visa before I leave.
But when I get there, after a tram ride all across Amsterdam, they tell me they don’t have it! They’d given it to the person who came to pick it up for Koning Aap, just half an hour before I arrived. “That’s what was arranged with Koning Aap,” they say. Well, not for my passport! They had a firm agreement with me that I’d pick it up right now, and I’m right on time. I’m the one paying for this service, it’s my passport, so they really have no business to give it to someone else when we clearly agreed I’d pick it up personally. I’m very, very angry.
Back home again, I call the Koning Aap office, but they tell me the person who picks up the passports for them is not actually an employee. I get a phone number, though. But when I call that it turns out the lady does not even live in Amsterdam — I’m welcome to pick it up she says. But it would take hours to get there and back, and I still have too much packing to do. I give up - I’ll get my passport at the airport tomorrow, and will have to try and find a way to make photocopies there.
