Obrigado! Je t'aime!

by WD Shaw (United States of America)

Making a local connection Portugal

I had five hours to locate my passport before the next flight to Paris to attend my friend's PACs ceremony. It disappeared at some point during my layover in Lisbon. It became apparent only when I walked up to the border check point agent to get the stamp to pass into the Schengen zone. Searching frantically through my pockets and small suitcase (always travel light), I looked pathetically into the blasé eyes of the agent, who gestured for an airport attendant. "Can you step aside please?" instructed the attendant in heavily accented English. He was a handsome yet gentle spirit and seemed genuinely concerned when I said, "I can't find my passport!" "Do you remember when you had it last?" he asked. "I know I had it on the plane because I had --" and just like that I realized that I left it in the back pocket of the seat in front of me. I told the attendant, who walked me over to his desk to make a phone call to the airline. They did not have a US passport. He explained that the flight attendants clean the plane immediately after disembarkment and give any lost property to the airline's department. He said I would have to go to Immigration to figure out an alternative solution. Now, I am from New York City where everything is bustling at a rapid pace. So when I say that the Portuguese immigration office was moving on a completely different timeline, I do not speak hyperbole. They informed me that I would have to call the embassy and see if I could get an expedited passport. The wait time: three hours. I grabbed a ticket and instead of sitting around twiddling my thumbs, I ran to the nearest airport phone. I called the airline again, "Do you have my passport?" "Eu ñao entendo," she replied. If my high school Spanish, college Latin, and self-taught French were worth anything, it was in this moment. "Mi passeporte. Il est perdu. Tu la habes ?" I asked frantically. "¿Que?" she replied. "Vous parlez Espanol ? Français ?"I asked. She responded, "¡Ah, si si! Passaporte. ¿Perdido?" "Si! Tu la habes?" I repeated. "No," she sighed and continued to speaking in Portuguese. Having no idea what she said, I responded, "Obrigado," and hung up the phone. The next few hours involved running around the airport searching the ground, calling the airline again to see if I could search the plane, finding out that the plane I was turning back to NYC, trying to get to the gate it was in after asking the airport attendant for information, being told that I needed a ticket to get through to the gate, smoking three packs of cigarettes, calling the embassy at the immigration office to no avail, and then being told that I would have to wait in the office to be sent back to the US. There were 1.5 hours left before boarding time for my next flight. Not wanting to give up, I slipped out of the office, ran back to the gate and scanned the floor again. An airport police office came over and asked what was happening because I looked insanely sketchy in the middle of a nervous breakdown a la Bryce Dallas Howard in that Black Mirror episode. I explained the situation. He chuckled a bit because I'm unintentionally funny and made a phone call. When he got off the phone, he said, "Be right back. Wait here." After ten excruciating minutes, he reappeared down the long corridor. I squinted to see if he had anything in his hand, but there was nothing. As he approached, he reached into his back pocket, smiled, and pulled out a passport. I ran to him, wrapped my arms around him, and squeezed him as tight as I could. It turned out that the passport was found by a janitor on the ground outside the gate. I hugged the officer one more time, shouted, "Obrigado! Je t'aime!" and ran to border security. Fortunately, I still had some time to step outside and enjoy the fresh Lisbon air. At least, I could still say, "I visited Lisbon." New passport stamp achieved.