Our Summer Trip Misadventure

“Do you have any proof that you live in the Netherlands?” the border control guard asked as he looked down at me from his high desk.

I was trying to board a Eurostar train from Rotterdam to London and was getting my first look at what life was like in the non-European passport control queue. Apparently it involves a lot more questions and glances of suspicion from the officer checking your passport. Annoying Brexit.

It had been four years since my family and I had last been to London. We’d checked-in, got our boarding tickets, been through security and arrived at passport control together. However, my wife is Dutch so she’d already been able to go through the much faster queue for European passport holders, taking our half Dutch children with her. They had already been out of sight for five minutes by the time I got to the front of my queue. Stupid Brexit.

After showing my residency permit (a new requirement since Brexit), and a few more moments as all my documents were studied, I was finally let through. It had been annoying but at least the inconvenience of Brexit to our trip was over. Our holiday could now continue as normal.

Around the corner I found my wife and children. The children were in tears. My wife looked at me with a worried look on her face and said, “We might have a problem.”

$#%^@!$ Brexit!

We were now standing between Dutch passport control (the one I’d just passed through) and British passport control (which we could not go through yet). While I’d been getting looks of suspicion from Dutch passport control someone at British passport control had been telling my wife that the children could not travel to London. Obviously my wife and I were not going to go on holiday by ourselves and leave the kids to it. None of us were going to London.

Since Brexit the travel document requirements for the kids had changed and we’d not realized. Previously they had been able to travel everywhere within Europe with their identification cards, including Britain. But Britain was no longer a part of Europe. Now the children’s ID cards were not good enough. Now they needed passports to travel to England.

The people at passport control were doing their best to find any loop hole that they could. Since our children are half English maybe that would create some options.

Unfortunately, ten minutes later, one of the passport control officer returned with the children’s identity cards and a very sad expression to tell us that there was nothing they could do. I could tell she hated having to give us that news.

“I’m so sorry. We’re here for the bad guys. You are clearly not the bad guys but there is nothing we can do,” she told us.

I was angry and upset but not at her or the other Euro Star staff. It was not their fault this had happened. They were as trapped by the rules as we were. So I did my best to push my feelings down.

She apologized again and led us back the way we had come. As we returned through passport control, security and check-in, with our children in tears, everyone at Eurostar looked at us and knew what had happened. They all looked sorry for us. Apparently this kind of thing happens a lot since Brexit.

At the check-in desk we were introduced to a lady from Eurostar who would try to help us arrange an alternative plan. Part of that plan involved emergency passports for the children.

“Is there anywhere in the station we can get emergency passports?” my wife asked.

“Sadly not. The closest place you can arrange them is Rotterdam Airport. We’re not supposed to send people there, but you could just go anyway and say we didn’t tell you not to,” the Euro Star lady replied. I could already tell I was going to like her.

She tried to get our Eurostar tickets moved to the next day to give us enough time to sort out emergency passports but there was a problem. There were no trains the next day, or the day after that. The system didn’t allow them to move the tickets more than one day at such short notice. She spent fifteen minutes trying to sort it out, calling in various colleagues to help. Sadly it did not work. This trip was starting to feel cursed.

We were crushed but there was no time to think about it. We had to go into damage control mode and do whatever we could to save the holiday. That meant dealing with one problem at a time in order.

Step 1 – Get the children emergency passports and figure out the rest from there:

And so we made our way to Rotterdam airport without the intention of getting on an plane. Luckily the airport was not too far away. We were there after a twenty minutes bus ride.

After talking to someone at the office there we discovered getting emergency passports for the children wouldn’t be a problem at all. We just needed to fill-in some forms and provide a passport photo… Passport photos we didn’t have unless they accepted the passport sized school photos my wife had in her purse. Sadly they informed us that they could not. Again, they were a victim of the rules as much as we were. Plus, they had been very friendly and tried to cheer our kids up by joking around with them.

“Is there a passport photo machine in the airport?” my wife asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

What! Why not, I thought to myself.

“Where is the nearest one?”

“At the newsagents in the shopping street about a five minutes drive away. It closes in fifteen minutes though.”

“We came by bus.”

“Get a taxi?”

Step 1.5 – Get a taxi within the next few minutes to somewhere we’ve never been to get passport photos made before the shops close:

We quickly scrambled outside and found a taxi driver who only slightly reluctantly agreed to a five minute drive to some shops. His reluctance grew when we asked if he could wait for us once there and then drive us back. Luckily for us we’d already hooked him with the first question and he could not easily back out.

We arrived as the newsagents was starting to close up. My wife dashed inside with our kids. I waited rather awkwardly with the taxi driver. After what felt like an age my family returned with the photos, jumped in the taxi and we sped off in what felt like the weirdest get away drive ever.

We arrived back at the passport office. It was deemed the new photos were official enough (my wife later told me she’d had to continually tell the kids not to smile as the photos was taken).  Step 1, get the children emergency passports, was more or less complete. As my wife filled out the forms I started on the next step.

Step 2 – Arrange alternative travel means to England:

We already knew there were no Euro Star trains until Monday but we didn’t want to wait that long to start our holiday. We’re not that keen on flying so that left the boat. It was Friday and a quick check on my phone told me that the boat was already fully booked. It was fully booked for Saturday too. Unless we planned to sneak on board disguised as crew we were going to have to travel on Sunday. With no other option I booked it. My wife finished the filling in the forms and our children became the owners of their own very bright pink five month passports. The holiday was saved even if it meant it started a little later… But did it have to?

None of us felt like traveling all the way backup to Friesland only to return again two days later. So what if we didn’t. What if we found somewhere to stay in Rotterdam?

Step 3 – Find temporary accommodation in Rotterdam:

As we took the bus back to Rotterdam Central we tried phoning a friend who lives in the city. We were going to ask if we could stay at her place. She was on holiday but her neighbors would probably have a spare key. Unfortunately she was up a mountain somewhere in a different time zone and didn’t have any phone reception. We moved on to plan B (Or was it technically plan D at this point?) and started looking up hotels on our phones. Most places were booked. We found one but we’d have to take two rooms. We decided to wait. We’d go to the hotel in person just in case there were any options that were not on the website.

When we got back to Rotterdam central I suddenly had a thought. We now planned to travel to England on the boat and come back using our original return tickets from Eurostar. But what if that return ticket became invalid because we had not used the going out ticket?

Since we were back at Rotterdam station I decided to walk back up to the Eurostar office and ask. My wife and the kids, deciding they had done enough running around, found a place to sit down in the entrance hall of the main station.

As I walked up to the Eurostar office on platform one the woman who had been trying to help us solve the problem with the tickets earlier spotted me and quickly came over.

“Did you already arrange emergency passports?” she asked in surprise.

“Yeah,” I said casually. By this point I’d calmed down, had accepted the whole situation  and was just trying to see the funny side of it. I even started to tell her the funny story of the passport photos. However, she seemed distracted, in thought and then suddenly cut me off.

“Is your family still here?” she asked earnestly.

“Yeah, they are just down stairs,” I replied, still casually but a little confused. Didn’t she want to hear about the reluctant taxi driver and comical dash for official passport photos?

“Get your family up here! I might be able to get you on the next train that leaves in fifteen minutes!” she urged while already turning and dashing back to the ticket office.

“The gate closes in two minutes so they better run,” said the nearby security guard who had heard everything.

Oh…

Step 4 – Get my wife to drag the kids up to the platform as fast as humanly possible:

“Hi. What’s up?” my wife answered from the other end of the phone.

 “Get up here quick. They might be able to get us on the next train but it leaves soon!” I told her as quickly as possible.

“Okay,” she replied in surprise and hung up.

The Eurostar office is on platform one of Rotterdam central. It’s next to a balcony overlooking the main entrance hall of the station. The security guard and I watched from a distance as my wife gathered up our backpacks, got the kids in motion and started to quickly walk in our direction.

“That’s not running,” responded the security guard beside me dryly.

“RUN!” I shouted over the edge of the balcony. She didn’t hear it. I’ll be honest, it was a bit of a restrained shout. Although I wanted her to hear me I also didn’t want to be responsible for causing a panic in a crowded public train station. I shouted again, trying to find the right balance between shouting to one person over a great distance vs. making everyone think the station was on fire or something. Unable to achieve that the security guard and I watched as my family made their way through the ticket barriers.

As they came up the nearby escalator to the platform they were near enough to hear me and started moving even faster. Together we dashed through check in. The Eurostar lady was still busy sorting out our tickets but she told us to already go through security. The guards there seemed to know what was up and tried to get us through as fast as possible. Next we ran to Dutch passport control. Again my wife and children went through the fast queue. I had to go through the non-European queue and show my residency permit again. Stupid Brexit.

I got through and found my wife and children on the other side in front of British passport control.

“This time we go through together,” she said, which was nice but technically I still had to go to the non-European passport check window.

Thank goodness they let us all through. We were passed security and both passport controls… But we had no tickets. Luckily the Eurostar lady that had been helping us had been following the whole way.

“The only way I could get you on board was to upgrade you to business class,” she said as she pushed the tickets into our hands.

I wanted to hug her. Not for the upgrade but for how she’d so earnestly helped us.

“You might not get the free meal. There might not be any left but at least you can travel today. Enjoy your holiday.”

It was becoming really hard not to hug her. Instead we thanked her about a hundred times and quickly made our way into the waiting room slightly shell-shocked. We didn’t have long to recover because the announcement suddenly came that the train was arriving. We had to move on to the platform.

Maybe ten minutes had passed between the Eurostar lady telling me she might be able to get us on the train and us actually sitting on the train. It was hard to believe. Something that had started with such a terrible moment had turned into an amazing emotional high. The last two hours had been an emotional roller coaster. Once we were seated I was able to cancel our tickets for the boat and get the money back. It only cost a three euro fifty cancelation fee but I was fine with that.

The best thing of all? When we’d been making our mad dash through check-in, security and passport control my wife had noticed something. The first time we’d tried to get on the train and had to be escorted out again everyone at Eurostar we passed had seen the looks on our faces, knew what had happened and looked sad for us. This time, as we dashed passed them, they were looking at us and then smiling to each other.