The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
In the peak of the summer July heat and on our first real day exploring Rome, my mom had her purse pickpocketed on the bus.
Within 10 minutes, she had a notification from the bank saying her card blocked a payment of $895 from a store nearby. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized her wallet had been stolen, along with her passport.
Immediately I called the Italian police, and it’s clearly not 911 in Italy, so it took a couple minutes before I could find the right number online.
I’m sure they receive hundreds of calls like this a day, and they connected me with the petty crime hotline and directed us to go to a police station nearby.
In the police station, there were people of other origins reporting their own similar story. Some didn’t speak English, or even a language that was close to being common for the continent.
Aside from the whopping $800 stolen from my moms bag, she was above all worried about the passport. We were leaving on a cruise in 2 days, and we learned in that moment. No Passport = No Cruise. So this predicament was about to become much more expensive.
We were very fortunate to find out there was a US embassy in Rome. An embassy which printed emergency passports. We only had one day to get this right, and it required waking up and arriving to the embassy before 8 am and the expected line of other people in dire need of a new passport as well.
We followed everything to the book, read all the tips and reviews and by the next morning, $145 later, we had a thin red book, reading ‘Emergency Passport’.
This is a very unfortunate story with a good ending, but I know for many others that’s not always the way it pans out.
In travel, everyones breaking point is different. For some it’s the airport delays, or the unfortunate pickpocket, and then there’s sickness, or bad weather. Whatever it may be, it’s important to remember it will work out and the next day will be better. And if it’s not the next day, the next week. And even if that seems too soon, the next month, and then the next year. It’s not the end of the world until you’re dead. Morbid but it’s true.
In the case of solo travel, a lot of these difficulties have to be figured out by yourself and moments even in the most beautiful places can feel not right.
What I have learned is you are only as physically strong as your mentality, and in times where everything can seem clouded, push through to the next day. If you need to cry, let that out, and then afterwards go take a shower, get a good meal, watch a movie in bed, or call friends from back home. If you’re up to it, and this is my greatest suggestion, try to get yourself back out there in the streets of another reality and just exist again.