Going a different route

As stubborn as he is, it’s no wonder why he wanted to take another route. Let’s do things the hard way instead of getting things done much easier and in as little time as possible. Let’s just let time roll on by in hopes that airline ticket prices go sky high, so much in fact, that I end up paying out of my ass!

Looks like he had to travel back to his hometown where our daughter was born in order to get things done. What was supposed to be a two hour process turned into a two and a half day of being given the wrong paperwork and the priest at the Metropolitan Church keeping him there for an entire day. I can only imagine the interrogation that took place by the priest. If you have ever lived in Greece and had to get legal forms processed, you would know what I’m talking about.

I am laughing while writing this as the memories of all the shit I went through while there come flooding back. I remember the time when the local police department was in charge of granting visitor visas. I was told by the local police department to cross over the border from Greece to Albania in order to get a stamp on my passport and then bring it back to them so they could grant me a visa. I remember them telling me to park my car on Greece’s side of the border and walk the rest of the way. Back in those days, no one in their right mind would do that, especially if they were an American. That would have been suicide.

I remember running around getting all the documentation needed in order to get married in the Greek Orthodox Church. Prior to the wedding, we had to go to a notary and have a paper notarized stating that any child that would be born from the marriage would be brought up Orthodox. And forget about naming your child whatever you wanted. That was just unheard of, unless you chose to name your child after either set of grandparents or after an Orthodox saint. In fact, my daughter wasn’t even named by us. Our daughter was named by the Greek Orthodox Church!

I remember when my daughter was born, and we had to go and register her birth at city hall, they used my birth name off my birth certificate as the name of the mother. They didn’t only do that, but they also switched my first and middle name around. So now on the records the mother of my daughter is my middle, first and maiden name in that order. When we tried to get it changed, they refused to do it telling us that this was the way it is done because they go by the mother’s birth certificate. It wasn’t worth fighting for at the time, so we left it alone. Anyway, the birth certificate I have for my daughter is from the Greek Consulate (a Certificate of Birth Abroad), so that is all our daughter will ever see, unless someday she needs the actual paperwork.

Enough of the memories for now. The paperwork has been sent to the Ministry of foreign affairs to be translated which will take about three weeks. Then finally it will be sent to me to renew my daughter’s passport.