Moldovan Adventure--Part 1

Going to Moldova is always an adventure. This time the trip there was even more of an adventure than we’d expected.
We were flying from Amsterdam via Budapest to Chisenau, the capital of Moldova, on Malev, Hungarian Airlines. We checked in at the self-check-in kiosk. While dropping our luggage off at the KLM desk (they handle Malev check-in there), the woman at the desk notices that our final destination is Moldova. She pulls up the information and starts reading every line to make sure everything’s in order to get to this country that she’s barely heard of. It just so happens that the passport she’s holding in her hand at the time is our daughter Rebecca’s. She informs us that passports must be valid for 6 months past the time of travel there. We knew we needed to renew our Dutch residents’ permits this summer and planned to check the whole passport thing then. However, the girls’ passports expire in March, only 5 months away. At first she thought none of us could go. Then, when she saw Mary and Keith’s passports were valid for another 5 years, she thought the adults could go but the girls couldn’t.
We quickly began thinking of alternate plans. Fortunately, Keith had the McNary’s phone number on his cell phone. Shane gave him the Stocks’ number in Budapest. Yes, Ralph said, he could pick up the girls if they couldn’t enter Moldova.
The lady behind the desk heard all of this. The girls have legal residence permits for the European Union which includes Hungary. She phoned someone higher up to get permission for us all to fly to Hungary (and then, presumably, we adults would fly further). This was granted, but then she wanted to cancel the girls’ reservations to Moldova. We asked her not to, which led to another 10-minutes of phone calls. She made a note on the computer record that KLM had already told us the girls would not be allowed to fly on to Moldova.
We checked all the bags only to Budapest because some repacking would be necessary if our party split, and we didn’t have time for that there. Safely on the flight to Budapest, Keith discovered Malev’s route flew to Iasi, Romania, near the border with our final destination in Moldova. If necessary, he could fly with the girls to Romania and then cross the border by land. Therefore, Mary would go ahead to Chisenau while Keith and the girls sorted things out in Budapest.
Due to all the time at the check-in in Amsterdam, two of our bags didn’t arrive in Budapest. The two that did, providentially, contained the things Mary needed to repack to go further. Mary headed off to Chisenau while Keith filled out the forms for the missing bags. He then went to the Malev ticket office to explained why three of the party had missed the flight to Chisenau. The lady there reticketed us for the night flight, 9:45 departure, 12:30 arrival. This seems to have deleted the warning note KLM had put on the ticket.
The next flight from Amsterdam had our missing bags. After more paperwork, we took a taxi to Ralph & Tammy’s house for a relaxing evening. At 8 Ralph took us back to the airport. The place looked deserted. Finally, after 20 minutes, someone showed up to open up a desk. Check in was no problem. The passport control in Chisenau stamped all three passports without comment, and all was well.
Moral of the story: check your passports and carry colleagues’ phone numbers.