Please take off your glasses
In Britain, if you renew your passport within nine months of its expiry, they’ll add that extra time onto your allotted ten-year validity. My passport was due to expire this December, so I applied for a renewal a couple of weeks ago. This is the first time I’ve had a biometric passport, i.e. one that…
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Crossing Qalandia
I was recently in Ramallah, and turned down the offer of a lift to Jerusalem in favour of taking the public bus – just to see what it was like (the luxuries of being a tourist). All traffic between Ramallah and Jerusalem has to pass through the Israeli military checkpoint at Qalandia (or Kalandiya, Qalandiya,…
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Slow Track
So I’d unexpectedly been upgraded to business class on my return flight into Heathrow Terminal 3 a couple of weeks ago, and during the flight the steward had handed me a card authorising access to the ‘Fast Track’ channel at passport control. Great, I thought. On arrival, the immigration area was jampacked and heaving with…