To get my Austrian passport renewed, I needed to visit one of the consulates my native country maintains in America to hand over my documents. The closest one is in Los Angeles, but that’s a roundtrip airfare and a day’s worth of travel, and also, I don’t want to go to LA. Since I was planning to visit Miami Beach to meet friends, I decided to go to the Miami consulate instead.
The consulate was located in a suburb and was so nondescript that at first, I couldn’t find it. At the address I had been given, there was only a law office that reminded me of Better Call Saul. The window facing the streets had broken blinds. I went in and asked the receptionist if she knew where the Austrian consulate was. She pointed me to a windowless meeting room in the back and said, “Wait here.” I sat down at the desk and looked around. There was nothing except two old office chairs and the desk. I grew bored quickly, and when the consul came in twenty minutes after my appointment time, it felt like I had been waiting for much longer. He was overweight, hadn’t shaved in a few days and wore a wrinkled Hawaii shirt. He needed a haircut and I’m almost certain he was hungover. We shook hands, and he took my documents and put them in a folder without looking at them. “I’ll mail your papers to the embassy and you’ll get your passport in a few weeks,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that there was a passport renewal fee. It was around $100, which I paid in cash.
A few weeks later I received a call by the Austrian embassy in Washington. “We’ve received your documents,” they said, “but you still need to pay the renewal fee.” I explained that I had already had paid the consul in cash. The embassy employee sighed audibly. “I see. Let me talk with him.” Later that morning she called back. “I talked with him, and it’s all good now. You’ll get your passport in the mail soon.”
I wasn’t particularly surprised when I learned some time after this that the Austrian consulate in Miami had closed.
Nehaveigur 