By Eileen Ogintz
Tribune Media Services
(Tribune Media Services) -- I'm still not sure where or how it happened that day in Florence.
Our passports were securely in my purse but that evening, the leather envelope I carried them in was gone.
Did I drop them at the Uffizi Gallery when we went through security? (The envelope wasn't turned in or stuck in the X-ray machine, as I'd hoped.) Did I leave them at the jewelry store on the Ponte Vecchio when I used my passport to complete the form entitling me to a tax refund on the gifts I'd just bought? (They weren't there either.)
Most likely, my pocket had been picked in what many warn is prime pick-pocketing territory. Luckily, we didn't lose any credit cards or cash -- just the passports and some itinerary information I'd stashed with them.
"These pick pockets are very, very skilled," said Michael Ma, a consul at the U.S. Consulate in Florence, Italy. They offer to hoist your bag on the train and then take off with the bag, just as the train is pulling out. They ask you to help with their baby and then, while you're preoccupied with the child, quickly grab your bag (even snipping the shoulder strap with a scissor). They sidle up to you in a crowd and reach in to an open purse. They will even snatch your purse from your restaurant chair while you're sitting there talking. "They take what they can without getting caught and move on," says Ma, who gives talks on the subject to some of the 10,000 American students who study in Florence every year. "Even people who know better, are victims in Florence."
And that includes me.
NOTE TO PARENTS: Make sure your students traveling and studying abroad are extra careful and know to go to the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate if they find themselves suddenly without a passport. The Web site, http://www.travel.state.gov/, provides links to consulates and embassies worldwide.
According to Ma, the U.S. Consulate in Florence processes 25 to 30 requests for new passports every week -- more in summer when the city is crowded with tourists. One summer day, he said, they processed 20!
So far this year, says U.S. State Department spokesman Steve Royster, some 108,000 Americans have reported their passports either stolen or lost; 310,000 passports were reported lost or stolen last year. The State Department reported a 10 percent hike in stolen or lost passports from 2005 to 2006.
At least some of these travelers were smart enough to have travel insurance. Significantly more claims are being filed with AIG Travel Guard (www.travelguard.com), the nation's largest travel insurance company, including many from traveling college students, reports AIG spokesman Dan McGinnity, noting that new programs will be added in June to insure kids under 18 for free, when they travel with insured adults, and to protect them against identity theft.
"In the height of the travel season, we get these claims on a daily basis," adds Sally Dunlop, a vice president for Travelex Travel Insurance (www.travelexamericas.com).
The travel insurance executives add that coverage, which typically costs 6 percent to 7 percent of your trip, can not only help facilitate getting passports replaced -- tell you how to get to the nearest consulate, or where to get new passport photos taken -- but also cover at least some of the costs associated with getting a new passport ($97) or changing your itinerary.
Still, let me tell you, nothing puts the breaks on an overseas vacation faster than losing your passport. Instead of leaving Rome with your cruise ship or catching your flight home from Barcelona, you're on a train for three hours headed for the nearest U.S. Consulate.
At the consulate that day we met Cleveland native Anthony Discenza who was mugged walking home from dinner in Florence, after he sent his dad ahead in a cab. He lost everything -- passport, credit cards, cash and travelers checks. (NOTE TO TRAVELERS: Don't walk alone at night in foreign cities or allow your teens to do so.) Ohio grandparents June and Hugh Bailey believe someone on a crowded bus in Rome cut the passport pouch right around June Bailey's neck.
"People let down their guard on vacation," observes Michael Ma, especially in a city like Florence. With the ancient buildings, narrow, cobble-stoned streets and charming trattorias right out of a movie, "It's easy to feel safe here," he notes. "But we're a city with city problems." His advice? Don't carry all of your cards and cash with you and be as vigilant as you would be in New York or any other big city. Don't carry all of the passports together either.
TIP: Stash a few extra passport pictures for each member of the family in your luggage. We wasted an hour racing through the streets of Florence near the consulate looking for a place to get some taken. We'd e-mailed our passport numbers to ourselves, but didn't need them.
It's ironic, though, that getting temporary passports (good for a year) in a foreign country proved a lot easier than getting one at home.
Now that passports are required for Americans flying to the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico (Next year they will also be required for cruises and car trips), the State Department is jammed with applications, on track to issue a record-breaking 17 million passports this year. That's why you've got to allow at least 10 weeks to get a passport, says Steve Royster, U.S. State Department. And even if you pay $60 for expedited service, the process can still take several weeks. (To download an application for a U.S. passport, visit http://www.travel.state.gov/.)
Doing everything by the book isn't always a guarantee either. Just ask my recently married niece Lauren Yemma who simply wanted to get a new passport with her married name before a recent trip to Europe. Despite applying in plenty of time, despite 3 a.m. calls -- the only time she could get through to the passport hotline, 877-487-2778, despite frantic e-mails, she was four days from departure and still without a passport. Only after her father-in-law suggested she contact her congressman in Southern California, U.S. Rep. Kenneth Calvert, was she able to jumpstart the process. "I got my passport the morning of my departure," she said.
Fortunately, we only had to wait a couple of hours. And if we hadn't gotten to the consulate at lunchtime, we would have had the passports even quicker.
The rest of the trip, I kept my purse carefully zipped. |
