How many of you have lost something in the last month? I’m awful at losing items and belongings, which poses a problem when travelling, looking after money and my passport. However, on my last adventure, my passport was stolen. Having never had a gap year, I had no idea what to do, or where to go in these circumstances.
The event happened at about 8 o’clock in the evening. We were in Sweden driving two combi vans full of 14 students excited over the prospect of eating something other than packets of crisps and chocolate, which had been our staple diet for the previous 24 hours. Parking in a petrol station, we locked the bus and ran off to get our food. Looking back we probably should have hidden all our valuables and, as my father later said, had a fanny bag to put our passports in. But you don’t consider that, at a 10-minute food stop, over £2,000 worth of valuables can be stolen. Sitting in Subway, filling our faces with a €4 meal deal, we were oblivious to the fact that our bus window had been smashed and we were in the process of being robbed.
One of the boys was the first to the bus; running to the crime scene everyone started searching for their belongings. What was worrying, and perhaps showed our age, was that the first thing that we panicked about were our missing laptops, iPads and purses. It wasn’t until everything had sunken in that we realised that what was more important was the fact that we were missing seven passports.
Now you know my story, you can imagine how scared we were. There were even a few tears afterwards, along with phone calls home. We were in Sweden and this posed a problem. We had two options: 1) Head back to Stockholm and go to the British Embassy. (Being within the EU crossing borders without a passport wasn’t a problem.) Or 2) Carry on our journey to Norway, exiting the EU, and deal with the passport situation another day.
We managed to cross the Norwegian border at about midnight. Luckily we got away with only the first bus being checked for passports, meaning the rest of us could sneak in behind them.
What to do if your passport is stolen:
- Go to the Embassy where you can apply for an emergency passport. This costs about £100, and can only be used once. All you need is preferably some other form of ID and also a passport photo to be used in your temporary passport.
- Apply for a NATO travel order. These are a bit harder to get but were previously common due to many people not having passports. They allow you to cross any border within a certain time frame.
Above all, make sure you cancel your passport! You don’t want someone else walking around with your ID.
I hope this helps. Travel safe.
Photo Credits: Pinterest