THE AUTHOR’S NOTE:
When I started this blog, I wrote a few travelogues. So, if you’re interested in those, by all means—keep reading! 😊 However, as time went on, I shifted my focus towards travel stories and witty guide-like posts to help you plan your adventures. If you wanna know more, check out my homepage!
Friday, the 12th of October 2018, was our last day at work. We wanted to have everything in order before the 3rd of November—the day our flight was scheduled, and we were to begin our trip into the great unknown.
Here’s an interesting fact: Time really, REALLY flies fast when you’re at home.
Even though we felt like we were running around and preparing for the journey all the time, the list just kept getting longer.
To top it off, I couldn’t decide which camera would be more suited to replace my old one. I was struggling with the “policy details” for the bank and insurance documents, and my car, which should already have found a new lucky owner, was still patiently waiting in my driveway.
I like to blame it on my (suspected?) ADHD, but I am a procrastinator. So, of course, the health insurance was taken care of right before departing, the car was sold just a day before we left, and I spent the last three days in Slovenia pondering what to squeeze inside my already overstuffed backpack.
I did, however, take my time and scanned all the documents and even bills of the more expensive equipment in case it got stolen (I was super proud of myself for doing that 😉).
The night before we left, Bojan asked me if I had scanned my visa.
I wasn’t quite certain why I should have done that, but still, I decided to play it safe and showed Bojan the visa while I was battling with my backpack.
We had checked off everything from our list and went to bed knowing that everything had been taken care of.
All of a sudden, the alarm clock rang—yay, the adventure begins! Our first stop: Milano Airport.
We decided to go there with the airport transfer company, and soon enough, I dozed off. After some time, while being half asleep, I remembered that a few days ago, I had dreamed about standing in line at the check-in and only then figuring out that I had forgotten all of my travel documents at home.
One thought led to another, and all of a sudden, I leaped out of the chair and shouted, “WHERE IS MY VISA?!”
Bojan’s face turned into a plethora of emotions—at first came a surprise, as I had started yelling all of a sudden; then came confusion, and finally, after pondering over it for a couple of seconds, a simple “OH SHIT…”
Somehow, he had forgotten to scan the visa, and to make things worse, the visa was left in the actual scanner.
We couldn’t just turn around and run back to Ljubljana, as we were already halfway to Milano by now. A few minutes of silence followed, both of us pondering quietly what to do now.
My brain started calculating our options, and I quickly figured out that there was no chance of getting the visa on time. Panic-stricken, I googled probably the dumbest question ever: “How to get to Cuba without a visa?”
Just to clear it up—there is NOW way of getting there without one. After scratching our heads, we figured that there were three possibilities:
The best possible option: Convince the flight attendants to let me board the plane with a simple (and hopefully not too blurry) photo of my visa since it is supposedly possible to buy a visa at Havana airport. Yeah, this might be pushing my luck too far…
Option number two: I could buy a visa at the airport from the airline we are flying with—a fellow couple in the van told us that this is a valid option— but only sometimes.
The last option is unpleasant, to put it mildly: We don’t get to board the plane! This does leave us with the option of going back home for the visa and boarding another plane the next day. In this way, the onward ticket from Cuba to Mexico wouldn’t be lost, but we’d still have to buy a new ticket for Cuba. Or… we buy the cheapest plane ticket for a random place in Latin America. One way or another, we’d lose approximately €1000, which would be quite a shock to our travel budget. Unfortunately, insurance doesn’t give your money back if you are silly enough to lose your visa 😊
However, one thing was for sure—we were going SOMEWHERE, either to Cuba, Argentina, or perhaps… Bali? 😀 So I slipped into the “what the heck” mood, turned the volume of my MP3 on, and tucked myself back to sleep.
And guess what: AirItaly does sell visas at the airport, and I was lucky enough to get the last one. Cuba, here we come! 🙂
