It was time (after 10 good years of traveling – and even the addition of extra passport pages – which incidentally I was so excited about, needing extra passport pages – though that was mostly just because of the endless parade of double-page German residency permits...) to renew my passport.
To do so, I made an appointment at the American Consulate.
Now, the consulate is not the same as the embassy, that bastion of high-security conveniently located smack dab next to the Brandenburg Gate but inaccessible to the normal public. No, no, the consulate is where mere mortals go, whether American or otherwise, and it's located way, way, way down in southwestern Berlin. Specifically, in an area called Dahlem that, at least from my current-day, Berliner-by-choice perspective is... let's just say, really far from where anything else interesting is going on.
(In German, they're not quite so polite, and would say it's "am Arsch der Welt." Translate it if you like. Ha – I just typed that into Google Translate to see what would come up, and it actually rendered the phrase quite idiomatically as "the back of beyond." Not what it literally means, though.)
To be fair, yes, there are solid historical reasons why all the American stuff in Berlin is down in Dahlem. That was part of the American Sector when the city was divided, so it became home to the Free University (Berlin's historical Humboldt University having ended up in the East part of the city) and to this day is still home to institutions like the John F. Kennedy bilingual school. Americans living in my neighborhood (Prenzlauer Berg, which is full of babies and toddlers) often move down to Dahlem (expensive houses, American school) when their kids reach school age.
This fascinates me in general, actually: All the middle-aged-or-older Americans and (former) West Germans I know in Berlin initially moved to West Berlin (logically enough) but even now, 23+ years later, they still have little or no connection to the parts that are the former East. Literally just no reason to ever be here.
For a young international person moving to Berlin now, though, it's a no-brainer that the eastern parts of the city (Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain – and Kreuzberg and Neukölln, which were politically West, but geographically more or less east, if that makes sense) are the interesting places to be nowadays, and to us, the former West seems dozy in comparison.
Anyway, digression aside, renewing my passport required a trip (over an hour by a combination of trams and subways) down to Dahlem. When I arrived at the consulate (heavily gated, with policemen keeping watch from a little police box out front), even though I had an appointment I first had to wait on a line, outside the building, before being allowed into the security checkpoint building that would then allow me to enter the actual building.
Did I mention it was raining?
Yes, I do understand why institutions of the American government are paranoid about security. (Though let's be honest here, there's quite a long list of geopolitical things they could stop doing out in the world that just incidentally might also reduce the need for uptight security.)
Still, I'd like to complain here briefly, on a personal and superficial level: I have all these friends who are journalists from Britain, Canada, whatever, and it seems like they're forever being invited to cool, classy events at their respective embassies. What does my embassy invite me to do? Wait outside in the rain.
Anyway, I didn't have to wait overly long – especially because Americans and non-Americans were asked to form separate lines, with some preference given to the American line each time a group of five was called into the security checkpoint.
Then the whole security process: ID check, metal detector, buzzer you have to ring before the door to the main building will unlock, airlock-type door system where one door never opens until the previous door closes. Finally into the main part of the main building, where another guard was on hand to admonish us to close the door behind us, because of course the next door wouldn't open until we did.
Once inside, though, I was able to approach the window right away, and hand over my current passport and paperwork. When it came time to pay the fee, though – that's when things got dicey, because it was 80-ish euros (I forget now exactly how much), and I hadn't brought that much in cash.
Please allow me to back up and explain:
I always bring cash for these sorts of things. Even though it's never necessary, because you can always pay by EC-card (German bank/debit card). But I'm a compulsively organized sort of person, so I always bring the cash too. In fact, I'd had "get cash" written on that morning's compulsively organized to-do list, but then I looked at it, told myself to stop being so ridiculous and crossed it back off list. And let myself enjoy ten relaxed minutes of breakfast, instead of rushing off to the bank before catching the tram.
...Only to arrive at the consulate to find they didn't accept EC-cards – only credit cards. Fair enough, I guess, since the American consulate is after all American, but still quietly ironic, since anywhere else in Germany would accept an EC-card but probably not a credit card.
Okay, fine, I thought. I can use my credit card and just pay directly in dollars, instead of euros. Convenient enough. (And indeed, the woman said they accept only American credit cards, not even German ones!)
I opened up my wallet, only to find... I wasn't carrying a credit card.
The Americans out there are boggling at the very idea of this, I know, but you have to understand: I never use a credit card in Germany. Like, never never. Pretty much the only time I even need one is once a year when I buy a plane ticket home to the U.S. from an American website. Germans just don't use them. They're a famously cash-carrying society, and if they do pay anything by card, it's with an EC-card that's debited directly from their bank accounts. And I like that; it's a smart way to live, and pretty much guaranteed not to let you get into the debt that plagues so many lives in the U.S.
But now here I was in Americaland, i.e. the American consulate, and I hadn't even brought a credit card. I guess I just took it out of my wallet at some point, because it seemed pointless to even carry it around.
So: In "America" without a credit card or cash.
Was there an ATM in the building (as you might expect in a place that regularly asks people to pay large sums in cash)? No, there wasn't. Nearby? No. Maybe down at the gas station by the next big intersection, the woman said.
There was nothing else for it: I went back out of the building and through the security checkpoint, where I asked the security guys (not American, but they determinedly spoke only English, and with a funny sort of accent as if they were trying to be Texan) for directions.
They said the nearest (though still not very near) ATM wasn't from my particular bank, so it would charge me a fee to withdraw money... But with the clock ticking and a full day's worth of work to get started on after I'd finally wrapped up the passport thing, I opted to save time over money.
So I walked a ways down the road (in the rain) to the gas station, and waited at the ATM while the man in front of me withdrew money. When it was my turn, I went to insert my card – and the ATM wouldn't take it.
After several tries, I went up to the gas station counter to ask – the machine isn't taking my card, but I just saw it work for the person before me – and the women there said to wait a few minutes: Sometimes the machine acts up, and you just have to wait a bit.
So I waited a few minutes and tried again...waited a few minutes and tried again...waited a few minutes and tried again... Finally, shrugging apologetically, the women behind the counter told me I'd be better off trying somewhere else.
Back outside (it was now raining harder) to try my luck further down the road in the other direction, where supposedly my bank had an ATM near the next S-Bahn station. Even by hopping on the bus, it was a ten or fifteen-minute trip over to the station...where there were branches of practically every bank you can find in Berlin, but not mine.
By this point, the whole adventure had tipped over from patently ridiculous to comically absurd, so I didn't even care. Got money from another bank, walked through the now pouring rain to get back on the bus, dashed up to the consulate and back to the security checkpoint.
But the guard, instead of sending me on through (because surely he recognized me by now!) reached for his phone. And when he got through to someone in the office inside, the first thing he said was, "I know it's already 12:10, but...."
Seriously? Seriously? After all this, was I going to end up being turned away because it was now the (German-style, strictly-enforced) lunch hour??
Barely breathing, I waited until the security guard said "Thanks" and hung up...and mercifully waved me on to go through the metal detector.
Back through the endless security doors, the buzzer, the guard, the stairs... And when I finally arrived back at the passport window with cash in hand, the whole process of turning in my passport, application and fee took about 30 seconds.
Lesson learned from this experience? I don't even know. Always carry cash? Always carry three different forms of payment? Never trust Americans? No idea.
But at least I came away with this story, of my Day of Drama in Dahlem.
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