Day 185 - A Trip to the Country

Image of Strasbourg
by Nouhailler, via Flickr.com

Stuttgart is very near France. So close, in fact, that traveling for lunch to the city of Strasbourg, the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and the official seat of the European Parliament, was reasonable. And Strasbourg was unique in that it was possible to have an excellent French meal in a restaurant where the waiters spoke English and we could pay the bill with German marks.

I discovered escargot in Strasbourg.

I traveled with my neighbor Tim often. When John, a new consular officer - a third junior officer whose arrival had been delayed by weeks - arrived in Stuttgart, Tim suggested that he and I along with the other consular officer, David, and his wife take John to Strasbourg to celebrate. In addition to offering excellent food, Strasbourg is very picturesque with many pleasant and comfortable walking paths. We spent a full day in Strasbourg and returned in the evening.

On Monday, our boss pointed out how our decision to all travel to Strasbourg on the weekend left the Stuttgart consular district without a vice consul to respond to any consular emergency. We hadn't given it a thought. The consulate had a duty roster and none of us were on duty that weekend, so we thought we were all free to leave town. But most emergencies brought to the attention of the duty officer are consular emergencies. Lost passports, visas that must be issued on the weekend to facilitate travel that just can't wait, lost Americans, arrested Americans - these things only seemed to happen after hours or on the weekend.

The boss was right. We never all traveled together again.

But I took every opportunity to continue traveling to Strasbourg. The visit of a former colleague from Minnesota, TJ, gave me another opportunity. France had just introduced the requirement for American citizens to have visas when entering the country. It was such a new requirement that TJ wasn't aware of it when he left the U.S. on his European business trip. When he called me to let me know he was in the area and mentioned that he was next going to France, I asked if he already had a French visa. That was how he learned he would need one. His flight to Paris was scheduled for the following Monday, leaving him no time to apply for one. So I suggested he drive from Frankfurt to Stuttgart so that we could travel to Strasbourg by car on Saturday for lunch since the French issued visas to those crossing the border by road at the border crossing. That way, we would have a wonderful lunch, a pleasant walk around the town, and TJ would have his visa for his flight to Paris on Monday.

Later I learned that TJ had a bit of an argument when he arrived in Paris as the visa issued at the border on our trip into Strasbourg was for a single entry. So our trip to Strasbourg for lunch hadn't solved TJ's visa problem, at least not the way I had thought. He was allowed to enter France anyway, having explained why he thought he already had a visa, with his passport as evidence.