A passport odyssey

A story of hope, decades long lost friends, and love beyond borders. A story of going to a new world, a story of challenges. But above all, a story of bureaucracy.

Almost three years ago, my wife and I were blessed with our little sunshine. She was born in the City by the Bay, San Francisco, just a few months after we moved there from Berlin, Germany. A few weeks after her birth, we decided to start the process that would get her the papers confirming she’s a European citizen — I am Croatian, and thus by Croatian law, she is Croatian too. All we needed was to get the paperwork done so that she actually holds the Croatian passport in her little hands. How hard could that be?

The closest Croatian consulate is in Los Angeles, but they offer a great service: more or less regularly they come to different cities in their area of responsibility, and offer consular services there. I called the consulate in Los Angeles, and figured out what papers we needed, and when they would be close to San Francisco the next time. It was a few weeks later that we drove to San Jose and to submit all necessary paperwork.

Waiting at the consulate, I noticed a man who looked like he was from Brač, the same island I am from. Now note that Croatia has more than 4 Million people, and Brač only has 14,434 of those, so the sheer probability of him being from Brač was less than one percent — if he was from Croatia at all. I told my wife that I think he’s from Brač.

“What? How would you know?”

“He looks like it.”

“What do you mean, he looks like it?”

“I don’t know. He does.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“I’m gonna ask him.”

As said, Brač is an island, so it might be that this little bit of isolation might have lead to people look in a certain way. Or it might just be that this specific nose just looked too much like my cousin’s nose. Who knows. I went over, and asked him.

He was.

So we started talking about people that we both know (turns out, there were a few). After a minute or two, a lady overheard us talking and also chimed in. She also knew a few of those people. She also happened to be from Brač. We figured that we had quite a few common acquaintances, until I suddenly mentioned my parents’ names.

The lady looked at me in shock. She asked, to be sure she didn’t mishear. I confirmed. She asked again. I confirmed. She started crying.

Which was a bit awkward.

It turns out, that my mother and she were classmates. Like half a century ago, half a world away, they went to the same school every morning. She had emigrated to California many years ago, and she had visited my mother in Supetar on Brač when I was the age of my daughter. She had played with me more than thirty years ago. On the spot, I gave a call to my mother and let the two of them talk. What a surprise!

But back to the paperwork. There was a small extra step required, it turned out. My wife and I had, in fact, not yet registered our marriage in Croatia. And in order to register my daughter’s birth correctly it would be necessary to first register our marriage.

A year earlier, we already had tried that once, but it failed because of a tiny problem.

We got married two years before in Berlin, as we lived there. And as we were planning to travel to Croatia rather soon, we thought we would register our marriage in Croatia instead of through the consulate in Berlin. Should be much simpler.

So on a very hot summer day four years ago we went to the administration in Supetar on Brač in order to register our marriage. We had all necessary papers with us, but, as said there was a tiny problem: what is my name?

It turns out that my Croatian documents had a dash between my first and second name, effectively turning it in a single double-name. My German papers though, throughout, lack this little dash. And so did our German marriage certificate. No dash. So what was my name? I had my mom there. I asked her. She didn’t know. It was a chaotic birth because I decided to come early. It was a bit of a jumble. She didn’t remember my name. Thanks, mom.

What has happened?

When I was born in Germany — and I am sorry for the flashback within the flashback — the consulate there send a message to the administration in Supetar in what was back then Yugoslavia. Given that this was in the dark ages before the internet, the message was a so-called fax. A fax is a scanner that takes the scanned data and sends it over an active phone connection to another fax, where the scan is printed. Faxes back then usually used about 300 to 1200 bytes per second, and on long distance calls, especially to the islands — where telephone lines were a very rare commodity — such faxes became quite expensive. Because of that, faxes heavily compressed the scanned data. Also scanners and printers back then, especially in fax machines, were not particularly great. The result was that faxes often looked like cheap copies that have travelled around half the world, which was in fact the case.

So when the consulate send a fax to the administration in Supetar, the fax that was received had a little splotch between my first and middle name. When they read it, they read that splotch as a dash, connecting my names. And that is how I was registered in Yugoslavia, and this is how Croatia registered me from the Yugoslav records. In fact, on that hot summer day in Supetar we actually saw the fax from back then — they still had it in their archive, and it really is easily mistaken for a dash — and that is how my name in Croatia and in Germany started diverging.

The administration recognized the error, and offered to immediately fix it. They would correct my papers, issue a new passport, and register the marriage. My name would be cleared.

Alas — we were just a few weeks from emigrating to the United States. Just the week before traveling to Croatia the United States consulate in Berlin had glued our visas into our passports. Changing the passport now would come at the most inconvenient time: even just getting an appointment with the US consulate in time would have been nearly impossible. And so we decided not to fix it at the time.

Fast forward. In order to get the Croatian passport for my newborn I first had to get her nationality confirmed. In order to confirm her nationality I first needed to get her birth registered. In order to get her birth registered I first had to get my marriage registered. In order to get my marriage registered I first had to get my name fixed.

Then the following steps took months of me communicating with the consulate, the consulate communicating with the administration in Croatia, and all back. In the end I got new papers that my name, indeed, had no dash. With that we went and registered our marriage. And with that we registered the baby’s birth. With that we established that she is indeed Croatian. And with that we could ask for a passport to be issued. More than 18 months of back and forth have passed until we reached that point.

The new passport would be sent to my registered address. On Brač. Which wouldn’t do. So I needed first to de-register my address there and confirm that I am now living in the United States. In order to do that I needed my Croatian Identity Card.

I got one of those when Croatia gained independence or so. Maybe when I turned 18 years old. One way or the other, since then I have moved about half a dozen times, and I had no idea where that long expired card was. So I had to write a declaration that I lost that card, which the consulate would then send to the police in Croatia, and once that was received I could register my new address and receive the passport. I sent the declaration to the consul.

A few weeks later, I asked for an update. Another few weeks later again. I didn’t receive any answer. So I called the consulate, to learn that the consul I was working with was not working there anymore. My emails were going nowhere.

I explained my situation. It took a while. I sent the documentation. I expected that all of this might restart from square one, but actually it did not. Within a few weeks my registration was updated, the passport issued, and together with the marriage and birth certificates, and also with a proof of nationality on my new old name, all papers send to us. Just in time for Valentine, my wife and I are now also officially married in Croatia, and my daughter has all the papers that prove she is a Croatian.

Closing this chapter of bureaucracy, I want to thank all people in the administration that were involved. Even though it took a ridiculously long time, everyone was always extremely friendly and helpful. I still find it hard to believe how a little faxing artifact almost four decades ago lead to prolonging a standard process to take years, and that reconnected my mother with a long-lost friend. It is amusing to see how easily reality can turn absurd.

First published on Medium on February 14, 2017.