Sitting at the Termini waiting, right before the backpack theft.

Text and Photos
By Shari Benyousky
Guest Columnist

If you’ve followed the Epic European Trip we are taking with recent Warsaw Community High School graduates Jason Benyousky and Ethan Spencer plus recent attendee Davin Broadhurst (now of North Carolina), you know that our European trip has been spectacular in many ways, beginning with tornadoes in Chicago delaying the trip by more than 24 hours.

Spoiler – the three graduates plus Antony Garza and myself made it to Rome. We ate, we saw, we sweated, we laughed. The time to catch a train to our next destination of Switzerland arrived.

Davin worried on the way to the Embassy.

Considering our experiences with invisible and late Rome buses, we wanted to book a taxi to Termini Station so we wouldn’t miss the train. But taxis were hard to come by as Formula 1 (technically Formula Rome E-Prix) races were occurring the same morning. To get a taxi, we had to leave our Airbnb by 6 a.m.

TIP — If you’re only familiar with American trains, you won’t properly appreciate how amazing European trains are. They are easy, cheap, and everywhere. This part of the trip used Italo and Trenitalia trains from Rome to Milan, Milan to Art-Goldau, and Art-Goldau to Lucerne. All told this was an eight-hour journey spanning 535 miles (861 Kilometers), and it only cost around $68 per traveler.

Well, it should have only cost $68 per person. But we made a grave error. One you shouldn’t make.

Once at the station, we had to wait, so we lined up our luggage against a wall and settled in. Some of us wandered around the station buying croissants and cappuccinos. In the hustle of the group returning and brushing off flakes of buttery dough, someone took advantage of the distraction, hooked one arm through a backpack, and disappeared around the corner.

It took a few moments for us to notice. By then, the bag and the passport in it had long disappeared out of the station and into the warrens of Roman streets.

Lost Passport And Backpack

Are there pickpockets in Rome? Of course. Are there thieves? Absolutely. Just like in Chicago or New York or any place with people.

TIP — Keep pictures of your data somewhere other than your actual items. Keep credit cards and cash in more than one location. Tuck an Apple Tag into the pouch with your passport and with your luggage so you can find them.

Traveling Without A Passport

Shari Benjoysky goes with Davin to the Embassy on the Metro.

Kudos to Davin who handled the whole thing well. He stared out the window as the train left Rome Station thinking about what little he had without that backpack — the clothes he wore plus his wallet and cell phone. Everything else he had brought had been in that gray backpack, now somewhere in Rome while he whizzed far away.

He could track his Air pods from his phone for a while, but we had to catch that Italo train, and the Italian police … well, they didn’t even write a report. “Maybe the thief needed everything worse than I did?” David wondered. The rest of us plundered our things to get him a second shirt, some toothpaste, the basics.

“Man, I had an electric razor in there too,” he moaned. We purchased T-shirts and socks. We washed clothes every day. He found a new toothbrush in a free little library at a bus station in Lucerne.

Luckily after a few days of sojourn in Switzerland (also a part of the European Union so no passport was required to cross the border from Italy), we were heading to Paris. In Paris, the United States Embassy could help.

Garza had even read up on what to do ahead of time, so he knew exactly where to go online for the forms and instructions. Our Airbnb host kindly printed off two documents Davin needed from the Parisian Ambassador’s website — one for a new passport and one to report the old one as stolen. Two days later, we headed for Paris with high hopes.

United States Embassy Paris

Emergency passport services are open in Paris on weekdays from 8-9 a.m. ONLY.

Davin and I awoke early, took the metro, walked past a lot of soldiers wearing body armor and heavy guns, and got in a long line. We wondered how on earth hundreds of people would get through in an hour, but at 7:59 a.m. someone yelled something in French and a few people walked to the head of the line.

I caught the word emergency and off we went. I showed my passport to sign him in, and we went through tight security. They frowned at a corkscrew in my bag. They also took away our phones and chargers and locked them in a cabinet. “Great,” said Davin. “All of the pictures of my documents are on my phone.”

The Waiting Room

Davin shows off his new emergency passport.

We walked up imposing marble steps and under hanging flags to sit in a waiting room. Davin clutched a paper with his number. Picture a BMV but much more intimidating. One wall was plastered with pictures of articles and pictures proving the enduring friendship between France and the USA.

“I hope that means they’ll help me get home,” whispered Davin. Other people around us heard and commiserated. All of us were the panicked bunch with stolen or lost passports who wondered if we would make it onto our flights home. Some clutched folders of carefully photocopied documents. We had nothing because the copy and photo places didn’t open until 9 a.m. and the emergency passport service office was only open 8–9 a.m.

One guy behind us said he had begged the concierge at the fancy hotel across the street to help him print everything from his phone. Davin had his driver’s license and a disarming smile.

Passport Photos

The Metro ticket to the Embassy.

Inside the waiting room was a machine for passport photos. Davin got a panoply of four acceptable pictures for 5 euros. After 15 minutes, they called Davin’s number to window 19.

The woman behind the desk studied his driver’s license and looked up a few things on her computer. She handed him a bill. “Go down to the register and pay 165 Euros. Come back here with your receipt.” We went. I paid. We looked at each other. Was this it?

Back at the window, she smiled. “Go sit again. Listen for your name in about 30 minutes.” Seriously, was this all? No folder of documents? We didn’t even have a police report about the theft. She waved us off.

The Emergency Passport

In 30 minutes, a guy delivered an emergency passport to Davin. It was purple instead of dark blue and said Emergency Passport on the cover, but otherwise, it looked just like a passport. Maybe a discount passport. But it did work.

The man also handed Davin a sheet of paper. “Take this or mail this in with your emergency passport within a year and they’ll replace it with a real one for free.” He smiled and directed us to the exit. Really? Yep. In less than two hours from leaving Airbnb to walking out of the Embassy, Davin had a replacement passport in hand.

“Here are your phones back,” the Security French guy said. “Bon Voyage!”

TIP — If you’re enjoying our escapades, keep your eyes out for further articles detailing our experience staying in a greenhouse Airbnb in Switzerland, enjoying Paris, and riding a ferry to Dublin.

Know of an interesting place or person which you’d like to see featured behind the scenes someday? Send SB Communications LLC an email at [email protected].