The Move

[redrover]

I'm officially homeless, in the truest sense. I'm living out of my suitcase in the hotel on RAF Alconbury, and will be for the foreseeable future. For the past week or so, I've been holed up in a similar hotel on the Naval base in Naples, Italy, waiting for my resident visa from the British Embassy.

On the 14th, Mike and I gathered all our documents and took the train to Rome, and then another train to Trastavere, where we disembarked and made our way to a third-party company who took our information for visa processing. In spite of a very disturbing stamp in my passport from immigrations at the UK border, Mike believed there would be no trouble acquiring a visa. So we dropped our documents off, gave fingerprints, had our photos taken, and ate at Roadhouse Grill, which was as good as you would expect from an American restaurant operating in an Italian train station.

And then we waited in the hotel which stands notable only in that it had the absolute most uncomfortable couch with which I have ever been inflicted.

Yesterday (my god, was it only YESTERDAY?), the third-party company e-mailed to inform us that our passports had been processed and we could collect them. We again traveled to Trastavere. I spent a good portion of the time hyperventilating, because due to my experience with Immigrations at Gatwick, I was dead certain I would be denied a visa. This would explain why, upon finding said visa had been approved, I started jumping up and down and shrieking in front of thirty visa applicants in the company's lobby.

Mike escorted me out of the building, and I sat against a wall for about ten minutes so I could gain some composure. I was leaving Italy.

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.

I have never felt such an enormous weight lifted from my shoulders. The sky was bluer, the grass was greener, the trash was less odorous. Mike said he hadn't seen me so happy in three years and six months. Coincidentally, this is the exact amount of time I spent in that fucking sinkhole of a country.

Upon returning to our hotel room, we booked a flight for this morning.

Skip ahead to this morning, at approximately 10:00 am, Gatwick airport.

Again.

The hike from the jetway to customs was about a mile, and I spent the entire walk alternating between hyperventilating (which I do quite a bit, apparently) and telling Mike to stop with the jokes about detainees.

We reached the customs desk, and everything goes smoothly until...the customs official sees the stamp Immigrations gave me in my passport two weeks ago. The one saying I had been denied entry into the UK.

I was again escorted to a holding area and asked to wait.

About ten minutes later, the customs official returned, stamped my passport, gave me a tactful (and very British) lecture on not allowing my visas to lapse (the word "pedantic" was used), and welcomed me into the United Kingdom. See icon for pop-culture comparison.

Now, twelve hours later, I have had my fill of Indian takeaway, and am begging my husband to agree to rent a "period farmhouse" which fits none of our criteria, but which I am absolutely certain is haunted and which will be called "The Burrow" if we reside in it.