Visa Attempt Number 42

Having survived Cancun, the wife and I are now making another effort to get to Europe. Like Charlie Brown, running up to kick that elusive pigskin, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment yet again.

A Greek consulate is not far off, so before long, we will be heading there so my wife can be put under a microscope and possibly allowed into Europe.

The Europeans we dealt with in past efforts refused to give us a chance. They thought a woman who had traveled to several countries with her relatively affluent husband, and who had returned from said countries without setting off any bombs or overstaying her visa and becoming a petty criminal, was sure to remain behind and start a human trafficking ring or something. Now we have a green card to bolster our wild claim that my wife wants to return to the US and her big house after our next trip. We hope it will get us some traction.

The Greeks at the embassy seem very nice. They actually called me and talked to me. That was a first. With other countries, I had a better chance of getting a return call from J.D. Salinger, and he’s dead.

We constantly get better at applying and traveling.

The Greeks want us to show them an airline reservation before they will give us a visa. There is no such thing as an airline reservation. I don’t know exactly when airlines stopped taking reservations, but it was probably in the eighties. When we were trying to get my wife visas in Zambia, we got travel agencies to produce ridiculous fake itineraries, which the embassies knew were fake. Somehow, this worked with several countries.

I finally figured out how you deal with the reservation requirement. You buy refundable tickets, which are insanely expensive. You go through the embassy process. If you get a visa, you return your tickets and buy new nonrefundable tickets which are much cheaper.

It’s all a big scam. It seems unfair to the airlines. On the other hand, airlines behave really badly all the time, so it’s hard to feel much sympathy. Air France and Aer Lingus literally stole my wife’s luggage, returned it months later, destroyed, and missing hundreds of dollars’ worth of stuff, and refused to pay us a dime. Airlines steal and break things all day, every day. Since 2001, their waiters and waitresses have gotten really full of themselves. They love throwing people off planes now.

We spent $3700 on tickets we have no intention of using. If we get a visa, we’ll only use our tickets if we can’t get cheaper ones. If we don’t get a visa, we’ll take all of our money back.

I don’t understand how having tickets makes you a better visa candidate. Osama bin Laden could have bought airline tickets legally. I can understand how they would want you to have a return ticket before flying, but that’s completely different. They could approve you before you buy the ticket and then require you to produce it at the gate before your inbound flight.

It would be nice to see Greece again. It’s one of the world’s top travel destinations. It’s not like Cancun, our last destination, where American kids go to practice regurgitation. We have booked a tour of the Acropolis and one for Corinth. We’re also planning to do a food tour.

You can keep the islands, except for Crete.

We’re shooting for Switzerland for the second part of the trip. Aim high when you expect to be rejected, I always say. I want to see Lucerne again. We want to visit the tops of some alps and take boat rides on the lake. We also want to see the Interlaken area. We hope to stay in Wengen, which is what God created while he was working on ideas for heaven.

Switzerland is the most beautiful country. Yeah, yeah, it’s subjective, yada yada yada, whatever. Switzerland is the most beautiful country. It’s more beautiful than any mountainous area anywhere else. North America, South America, the Himalayas…no competition.

There are other places that look good in photos. Go there, get out of the plane, and what do you get? Mosquitoes. Blistering heat. Stifling humidity. Europe is the air conditioned continent. In Western Europe, even the bad days are great by American standards.

The alps have natural beauty plus a population that appreciates it and creates houses and buildings that complement it. Other mountainous areas look like slums in comparison.

Georgia has one of the two highest mountains in Europe. The nearest town looks like mud daubers built it.

Of course, not all of the beauty of the alps is in Switzerland, and Norway has some stunning scenery, but overall, Switzerland IS the most beautiful country. So we are going to try to go there and stuff ourselves with dishes full of potatoes and fried cheese.

The Swiss also have it more together than anyone else. I would put Singapore in second place. The Swiss are rich, they have very little crime, and they seem to do everything they do as well as it can be done. I suppose most of them are godless leftists, but they are extremely capable godless leftists.

If they won’t take us, I guess we’ll have to vacation in Tennessee.

I’m trying to improve my touristing skills. I have always traveled with a huge old bag because I had to bring my wife things. On the way over, the bag would weigh 45 pounds, and on the way back, it would weigh 20. I always had to go through the bag claim. I never knew whether the airlines were going to steal my things. Now I’m trying to work it out so I can take a carry-on.

You would think it would be simple, but it isn’t. Different airlines have different carry-on size requirements. It’s really stupid. I’m trying to find the biggest carry-on around that will make nearly every airline happy. So far, it’s looking like the Travelpro Platinum Elite Rollaboard.

A rollaboard is a bag with two wheels. A spinner is a bag with four wheels. I don’t know why they call them spinners. Maybe because you can spin them on their wheels. It’s a stupid name.

Rollaboards are better than spinners. They’re sturdier. Spinner wheels tend to snap off. Rollaboards also hold more stuff, because the rolling hardware takes up less room.

Some Youtube travel nerd recommends a backpack with no wheels. Sorry; no. My backpack is my personal item. Also, if I have a second backpack on my back, how will I carry the first one? You want one bag on your back and another one on wheels.

When we travel, I take a PC and some camera stuff. That means I have to carry my backpack everywhere. I can’t leave expensive stuff in a $40 hotel room safe, and I can’t travel without a computer and camera.

The alternative is to keep using my giant bag, continue to avoid putting valuable things in it, and hope the airline and TSA employees don’t steal too much.

If I do that, I risk finding myself in a foreign country with no clean clothes. That actually happened to me when I was a kid. My mother had to take me to stores in Luxembourg and buy me tight clothes for European kids with little stick arms and legs.

I am practicing filling my wife’s carry-on with my stuff. If we can work it out so we still have a fair amount of junk with us when we travel, maybe I’ll get a smaller bag for myself.

I want to go to Europe this year because this may be the last time we get to travel without a baby or a heavily-pregnant woman. It amazes me that people manage to travel with babies. I can’t see us doing it in another country. Maybe in the US. It sounds unbelievably difficult and expensive, and no baby is going to benefit from foreign travel. He or she would just make things worse for us. I don’t think travel does anything for kids until they’re at least 8.

Make that 10.

It’s hard enough, slowing down for my wife. We take forever to leave our hotel rooms in the morning. She can’t walk up hills like I can. She has to sit down a lot. Imagine adding two tiny wives that aren’t potty-trained, can’t walk, and can’t read.

I see how being orphans is going to impact our future. If we had parents or even useful brothers or sisters, we could leave kids with them.

Both of us should have Global Entry by the time we try to travel, so there’s that. On the way home from Mexico, I had to wait in the long line with my wife and the suspicious peasants.

It’s all up to the Greeks. Either we’re going to Greece, or it’s, “Hello, Gatlinburg.”