Blog Marathon - Post 23 - The story of (almost) lost passport

My husband is a world traveler. He has to travel extensively on business trips. China, Japan, the US are the countries he always visits. Yesterday he came back from a 10 day trip to China. It's very hectic for him, but he enjoys the flight travel, the food on the flight. He also explores the local cuisine once he visits those countries. He often has different experiences to narrate, and the story he described today morning gave me goosebumps.

He entered Germany yesterday night at about 7 pm, and he had to undergo border control in Frankfurt. He gave the passport and the ID card to the officer who must have stamped the passport with the date. After that, my husband, A, doesn't remember what really happened with the passport. If he took it back or left it there and went ahead to collect the luggage is still not clear. He received the luggage and went to the Frankfurt Airport train station to catch a train to Karlsruhe. He thought of checking all the bags with him and suddenly realized that the passport was nowhere in his sack or bag. He stood still for 2 minutes. He tried to recollect the events after leaving the immigration counter, but he didn't understand where exactly he dropped the passport. He quickly took the decision to report the incident to the Police there. He went and informed the police about the missing passport. They asked him about the tentative places where he thought he might have lost it. The police called to various locations within the airport, but couldn't trace the passport. A decided to lodge an official complaint by providing the xerox copy of his passport. All our future was hanging on that one passport. If he didn't get the passport within 2-3 days, our stay in Karlsruhe would have got endangered. We might have to go back to India as our visa was expiring next month, and the possibility of seeking an extension was only possible with the passport. The chances of receiving a new passport within a few days from the Indian Consulate was also a big challenge. But all these future hurdles were avoided when the police got a call from the immigration task force. The passport was retrieved, and he could collect it from a different counter immediately.

A sighed a huge sense of relief and collected the passport. A had an intuition for 3-4 days that something was going to get lost. He had thought that something would happen to the residence card, but he hadn't thought that the passport would get lost. Thankfully, everything turned out well, and the passport was retrieved successfully. This was possible only in Germany, I think. Had it happened somewhere else in Europe, he would have to face a lot of problems while getting it back.

Due to A's presence of mind of contacting the police and seeking their help. And also, due to the blessings of God, our parents, and well-wishers, a mishap was averted.