Is our trip going down the drain?

On 4.7., Tina and Robert drove by car from Hungary/Zalakaros to Zagreb Airport, so Tina could fly from there to Barcelona for a 2-day team event of her company. She gladly interrupted her sabbatical for this 🍾🏄‍♀️😎.

At the border to Croatia, we had a passport control for the first time in a long time, and we had a bad feeling because we had brought our passports, but the ones for the children were at home in FALKENSEE. After all, we just wanted to go on a "European tour" and never needed them in Slovakia, Hungary, or the Czech Republic...

The border officer patiently answered all my questions (Croatia - not a Schengen country, so passport obligation!, Replacement passports can be applied for at the Hungarian Consulate in Budapest, etc.), and it became clear to us; if the children had been in the car, we definitely wouldn't have been able to cross the border!!!

How should Robert and the children pick up Tina from Zagreb Airport on Saturday? From there, our journey to Slovenia should start. What would become of our two-week vacation in Croatia??

What a shock! We needed the children's passports... But they were in Falkensee 😳!

We made various phone calls to the Hungarian Embassy, who confirmed that replacement passports could be issued in Budapest (and only in case of LOSS!), but only in the presence of BOTH parents - but Tina planned to enjoy herself in Barcelona... We briefly considered whether Tina should cancel her flight to BCN.

Now Robert suggested driving from ZAG (after dropping me off at the airport) directly to Falkensee and back to Grandma/Kids in Hungary, so more than 20 hours of driving time by car... 

However, we were no longer sure whether the children's passports were still valid... The Falkensee Citizens' Office helped us with this; after I gave them the children's dates of birth over the phone, we found out that they were still valid 🙏🥁.

After another half an hour, we had booked a flight for Robert from VIENNA to TXL that same evening and back the following morning, so he only had to manage the routes ZAG-Vienna and Vienna-Zalakaros by car...

Even though we naturally asked ourselves several times how stupidly we had prepared for this trip, we kept telling ourselves that we were lucky in our misfortune - it would have been much worse if Robert and the children hadn't been able to cross the Croatian border on Saturday!

So Tina arrived in BCN on this Thursday afternoon on time and Robert just managed to catch the flight to Vienna and to EasyJet to TXL.

And now we are in possession of the children's travel passports - now the vacation can really begin 🤗🥳🤪.