Europe Bound: Babies Need Passports Too!

Posted by Katrien Vander Straeten Jun 30, 2006

In order to save money, we booked three seats on a bus to get from Antwerp, Belgium, to Florence, Italy. Here's how it went down. Prepare for disaster!

In the end there were four of us, as my mom could come as well. On Saturday around noon we boarded in Antwerp. Amie was on her best behavior. She has been crawling for months, and is getting really good (and fast) at it. So it was no surprise she wanted to crawl around, which was not allowed of course. Still, we had many toys with us, and there were three adults to entertain her, not to mention the other passengers on the bus.

After an hour or so we arrived in Brussels, where the driver proceded to ask us for our passports. That was when our first disaster struck (yes, there were more to come!): we had forgotten Amie's passport!

Funny, we went through all that trouble to get one for her, and it was the first document we checked upon leaving for our flight to Europe.

The thing is: who thinks of bringing their passport on a bus? Also, we had naively assumed Europe to be a borderless place, no passports required once you're in... Well, no. the bus was bound to go through Switzerland, which is not yet part of Schengen.

So there you had it: baby gets kicked off the bus, mommy needs to come too, of course, and grandma decides to get off as well. My husband, who was due at a conference in Florence the day after, remained and journeyed on.

"Quelle blague," as they say in French: what a joke! Not a funny one, though. Still, imagine the oversight had been noticed in Basel, Switzerland! So, it was a good lesson: we will never ever forget her passport again (or our own), and the lesson didn't cost us much (the most damage done was to our pride).

As I always say, we had better roll with the punches, especially those we administer to ourselves. So I rebooked our tickets for Monday.

Of course, that was not the end of our trouble that day. At the train station (Brussels North) there are no elevators up to the tracks, so we had to lug Amie in her heavy-duty stroller as well as all our suitcases up the many stairs. Then our train to Antwerp was delayed for over an hour (the locomotive broke). We arrived back at my parents' place five hours after we left... not inch closer to our goal.

Not that that was the end of our tribulations: to be continued!