Visas

When I used to have to renew my visa quite frequently for a Central American country, I hated the fact that I had to get a new visa every three months. I hated the fact that each visa ate up a complete page of my passport. I hated the fact that they, with bureaucratic inflexibility, required a new photo of me every six months, as if they were doing a Monet study of my graying hair, although at the end I must confess they were flexible enough to settle for just a fresh copy of the old photo. I hated their immigration form that was so impossible to decipher and fill out that it could easily substitute for the hardest of crosswords. Finally, I also hated the wait at the airport of at least one of those hours that multiply into three when one is tired. 

All that was true before I entered Europe—in less than twenty seconds—without anyone putting even the smallest stamp in my Venezuelan passport (years before, I had received my Polish passport and even more years before the European enlargement.) 

Hey, I thought to myself at least in Central America they recognize one as a human being, but here they just ignore you—and that is worse.