Today we make the 45-minute-drive, 45-minute-ferry-wait, 90-minute-ferry-ride, 40-minute-drive to the Consulate to get Dave’s visa.  It’s a cumbersome trip that starts with a 4  a.m. wake-up, but it’s necessary because the only alternative is to mail Dave’s  passport to them.

In other words, the passport, a document issued by a federal bureaucracy, would travel  via Canada Post, a second federally overseen bureaucracy, to a foreign federal bureaucracy for approval.  You may notice I used the terms “federal” and “bureaucracy three times.” Yes, mailing a passport would trigger the Bermuda Triangle Law of Bureaucracies, in other words, doom would inevitably follow.

Note: For this excursion, I get up at 4 a.m. Dave gets up at 4:45. This is one of the usual gender inequities of nature, that wherever a couple needs to go, the man can get ready in under five minutes. A woman, through no fault of her own, needs 90 minutes prep-time at a minimum. Am I wrong about this?

Let’s not discuss it now. It’s 5 a.m. as I write, and I’m a little growly, owing to the early hour and the fact that my own visa is nowhere in sight.

Starbucks in Bern.