Home Home Homeee

I made it home to Half Moon Bay yesterday. Tiin, Momma Ursi, Nadja, and Marielle all came with us to the airport to say good bye. Christina and I had a ton of luggage, it barely fit in Tiin's car. At the airport people probably thought that all 6 of us were going on vacation instead of just two travelers.

We had a little bit of airport drama. Checked in ok, but border patrol was not as smooth. Christina and I had "over stayed" the 90 days allowed to be in Europe without a VISA, but we thought it would be ok if we told the nice Swiss officials that we hadn't been in Switzerland the entire time and that we had travelled to other countries too. Yeahh... not the case.

Ch was first in line. The guy looked at her passport and saw that her stamp said she had been in the country since June 1st. He asked her a few questions, and then it was my turn to present my passport in the next line over. I could hear her conversation, and I could tell that it wasn't going well and that mine was going to be similar.

The lady looked through my passport and, for starters, couldn't even find my stamp from this year. She thought that my passport read that I had been in Switzerland since 2009. Oops. I politely pointed out that I had another, more recent stamp. She then asked me if I was traveling with Ch, and I said yes, we had been traveling throughout Europe this summer, and the Zurich airport, just happened to be our round trip plane tickets.

She looked at me like "Nice try, you idiot."

Meanwhile, in Ch's border control line, the guy had called in back up, taken her passport, and asked her to wait to the side. Sweet life. Two seconds later, the same happened to me.

As we are standing, waiting, and wondering what was going to happen to us, we realize we have about 15 minutes before our plane left and hadn't even been through security yet. YES, I was nervous.

The locked sliding glass doors marked for officials only opened up behind us and 5 Swiss policemen came out. I turned to Ch and said, they are coming for us!

Luckily, the 5 police passed by and another official looking man came over to talk to us. He took our passports and told us to follow him to some room for questioning. GREAT. 15 Minutes until our flight leaves.

We followed him like obedient Americans and sat down when he told us to. He turned to disappear somewhere, but before he did I managed to ask him an important question.

"Excuse me, Sir, I know you have other priorities right now, but our flight leaves soon, are we going to make it?"

I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to ask him this or not, but I was pretty set on getting home, so I decided to take a risk and ask him.

He looked at his watch and at our boarding passes.

"Hopefully."

... He came back a few minutes later and asked us to fill out some papers. Most was in German but we had to sign something saying that we knew our rights and that we could be subjected to some "hearing in the court of law," whatever that means... He explained that we will probably receive a fine in the mail for over staying in Switzerland and that we might not be able to come back to Europe 2-5 years. I am curious to see if we actually do get a letter in the mail in a few weeks!

Anywho, we made it to our flight with minutes to spare. They were looking for us and as we got off the escalator, a nice flight attendant spotted us, helped with our carry ons, and they closed the airplane door behind us. BARELY MADE IT!!! But we did, and that is all that mattered. When we sat down we started laughing about how ridiculous the situation was and that we couldn't believe we had just been detained by the Swiss authorities.

The flights were smooth and we were happy to be greeted by our families at the airport.

RR and I with my welcome sign.

Good to be home! Already had Mexican food, got my mani/pedi, and drank a Jamba Juice. Life is good.