7 Deadly sins
- Wrath
- Greed
- Sloth
- Pride
- Lust
- Envy
- Gluttony
You should not show an excess amount of pride or else, is what I should have been thinking. But instead I decided that my son is, just like me, an American and so we will use our American passports to leave Germany to visit grandma and grandpa for Christmas.
The three of us crossed passport control, boarded our airplane and had a great time with grandma and grandpa. On our return the border guard stamped Timothy’s passport on our entry and we went home none the wiser.
It was the next year, we were going to visit again for Christmas. There is not enough pre-travel and pre-christmas stress as going through an airport at this time of year. It was as we were trying to get out of the country that everything all came together. There is really no reason why either myself or my wife should experience any problems leaving. My wife is German so she had no problems, and I had the necessary German paperwork covering about 6 pages of my passport so that also was not a problem. The real culprit was little Timothy.
The boarder guard had eagle eyes and saw that the little tyke had no living permit in his passport, and so although he did not think we stole him, he could see that he came to Germany about a year ago and thus he had overstayed his permitted three months. I am not quite sure what the penalty is for overstaying your leave but the guard didn’t want to let the little scofflaw escape so easily.
The mother was obviously German, due to both her passport and by this time also her attitude. Thus the child of a German actually is a German and doesn’t really need any special living papers. The crazy thing he has a passport we just didn’t bring it as his father had almost unilaterally decided that the boy is an American and thus will be traveling on his US passport leaving the German passport at home.
It was a recipe for disaster, and it would have turned out very badly if the computer system had not proven that indeed my wife did have a child and his name matched that of my son. The guard did let us pass.
We enjoyed our Christmas but of course we had similar problems on our way back into the country as well. My wife was able to explain the entire story again and the border guard didn’t really like the situation but he did at least let us back in but he made us promise to visit the proper authorities to get this cleared up.
Lesson learned: Travel with both sets of papers
It was the next year when we did have all of our papers that we saw someone else who appeared to be in the exact same situation. However, this foreign bride was traveling alone with the child and the border guard was not as forgiving.
Lesson learned: Always bring a native from that country to help sort out problems