Travel FAIL.

Ok people, listen up. It's time for you to learn from my mistake. I was meant to fly to Amsterdam from Boston last night. I'm still in Boston.

The lesson for you is this: double and triple check the passport and entry requirements for whatever country/countries your travel plans may include. Especially if they are countries you intend to arrive in/leave by air. I don't care if it's a friendly country that Americans travel to all the time, if it's a European Union country, hell even if it's one you've already been to with no issues.

When I went to Australia last fall (2009), I needed a visa. Now when I think of visa, I think of when I had to go to the French embassy and apply for a visa to study there for the year. As an American tourist going to Australia, visa actually just means silly-income-generating-scam for the Australian government. It was a super easy, $20, apply-online-and-be-instantly-approved deal that existed in the virtual world only. I didn't get anything beyond the standard entry stamp in my passport. But I never would have known about it if my roommates hadn't gone to Australia the spring previously. When I think of countries for which I might need a visa, I think of mostly Asian countries. Not friendly, English-speaking countries that Americans travel to all the time. I went to New Zealand on the same trip and didn't need anything at all. I had another friend who didn't discover she needed a visa for Australia until she tried to check in for her flight. Fortunately she has a spiffy phone and could get herself one on the spot and continue her trip with no problems.

My problem was not with a visa - I don't need a visa to go to the Netherlands. However, the Netherlands requires visitors to have a passport valid for 3 months past the end of their visit. So even though my passport doesn't expire until January 29th, 3 weeks after the date my itinerary showed I intended to leave, I couldn't go to the Netherlands. (Not by air travel anyways...) A passport that is valid beyond the actual trip isn't something I ever would have thought to worry about. Honestly, what meaning does an expiration date have if the thing in question isn't good up until that point??? I could possibly see if I didn't have booked travel indicating intention to leave prior to the expiration date, but seriously people, I had a plane ticket to leave well before my passport expired.

What further baffles me about this particular instance - neighboring EU countries don't have such a stipulation. In theory (if it wouldn't have cost $4000), I could have flown into Belgium, and then walked, driven, or taken the train to Amsterdam. I've walked and driven over EU borders before. 99.9% of the time, a customs station doesn't even exist anymore. The year I studied abroad, I had my passport checked exactly one time while traveling by bus, and exactly one time by train, both times on the Czech/German border.

Now that I'm stuck (Delta was kind enough to give me credit for my flight to use however I like within the next year), I'm hearing that some countries (Mexico being one) require a buffer period as long as 6 months. So your passport that you think is good for 5 or 10 years, really isn't. DOUBLE CHECK. TRIPLE CHECK. The US State Department, travel guide books, travel agents, and other countries' tourist information sites are all resources that should have entry requirement information. Be paranoid. I wasn't and it cost me. Ugh.