Yesterday's blog about Chuck Ferries reminded me of a bad incident that happened to me when we did that trip to Europe in 1990. Tom Stendhall, then general manager of Scott Europe and Ferrie’s partner, took us in his can after picking us up at the Geneva airport and drove us through Munich.
Around that city, we stopped along the authobahn to have lunch, and then proceeded towards the Austrian border (these days were well before the Shengen agreement) and once there, I realize I didn’t have my French passport on me (it was a few months before I would become a naturalized American citizen).
Of course, this happened on a week-end so the solution we reached was for me to return to Munich, find a hotel there, and on Monday, go to the French Consulate, while my buddies would drive on to Austria and to Italy.
When the Consulate opened on Monday I was given a “Laissez Passer” by the consulate with only two permitted border crossings, so I boarded a flight to Venice to rejoin my party. Once there, we conducted the rest of our business, and after stopping at the Scott pole factory near Aosta, we went on through the Grand St Bernard pass and cleared immigration at the border.
By then, I had burned all my allowed crossings on my Laissez Passer and still had to return back to France from Switzerland to get a new passport, so when we got to Geneva, I rented a car in Switzerland and don’t recall how I did it without a valid ID, but anyhow, I wondered what would happen if I got stopped at the Swiss-French border.
Luckily the custom agent waved me through and I was on my way to get my new passport made at the town I was born on the south shore of Lake Geneva. I had to wait a couple of days to get it and was then able to return to the US. The lost passport was eventually mailed back to me one year or so later; someone found it where I lost it and had returned it to the authorities.
All this to say that learned a hard lesson: don’t lose your travel documents when you’re abroad!
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