Today was the day. By the fourth passport, they got my wife’s right. Mine only took two tries. The name thing: Spanish names include two first names and two last names, father’s and mother’s, and these do not change. It’s a very consistent, and sensible, system.
Unless you’re a gringo. We each had one where they got the name wrong. My wife’s first they screwed up (she got a guy who is fluent in English; that’s how he expressed it), then she managed to sign hers outside the allotted area, which nullified another. Then the name thing.
When she finally got hers, we were more than ready to get out of there, and though we thought it odd they gave her a second one with the corner clipped, we just threw it in the envelope and skedaddled. When she finally looked at it—back home—she realized it belonged to someone else. Someone else with five years remaining on his US visa. He would want that passport!
My first thought was to send an email to the passport office. But the form on their web site doesn’t work. The phone number given is 152 and an extension. Of course (as with our mutualista), everyone’s supposed to know you add a 2 before it if you’re not in Montevideo. When I remembered that, I got someone who told me to call back in the morning when the office was open.
I hung up and within five seconds the phone rang. It was someone else from the office, asking if I had the stranger’s passport. I asked what I should do. She said she’d call me back in five minutes.
Its owner lives relatively nearby, and will come to our house tomorrow morning to collect it.
Had a chuckle pondering the likelihood of such a casual resolution happening in the U.S….
