Month: October 2012

Friendly Faces: a visit from the Best Man (and Wife!)

I had last week off. It was kind of a staycation for us while the Best Man and his excellent Wife (shall we refer to them as “BMW”?) came to sample three regions in Bavaria:

  • the Upper Palatinate
  • Lower Bavaria
  • Franconia

The BM (okay, let’s stop that right now.) Nate had visited once before, back in 2004, along with fellow Algonquin Middle School alumnus Sam, and they got full into Oktoberfest mode. At that point, Excellent Wife (EW) Carrie was just barely in the picture. But we got to know her over subsequent visits to Detroit and Puerto Vallarta and love to see how happy they are together. Continue reading Friendly Faces: a visit from the Best Man (and Wife!)

Residence Permit Renewal in Regensburg

My trusty travel companion, who’s been with me on every flight and across every border, needs replacing. Of course I’m talking about my passport, not Sarah! (She is my FAVORITE travel companion, but truth be told, the passport has covered more miles with me than she has, owing to frequent business trips to Romania and occasional ones to other countries). Since it expires in March, and some countries won’t let you enter at the border if you’re in the six-months-to-expiration-window, I decided to renew somewhat early in a low-urgency period of the year. I was not happy about the discrepancies in the passport renewal process descriptions on the travel.state.gov sites (and as of this writing, they’re still there), and the unnecessary travel they caused me, but at least my new passport arrived quickly.

Getting a new passport, however, meant invalidating my current one, and my residence permit along with it. Fortunately, getting a new residence permit was not a big deal. Continue reading Residence Permit Renewal in Regensburg