Last week, we both got letters from Frankfurt-Stadt, the official government offices, and I immediately said “Oh great, what’d we do wrong now?” We poured over the letters looking for any familiar words. Finally, I remembered - our driver’s license! I knew that our four weeks was already up because I was already worried about what kind of hoops we’d have to jump if these letters never came, so the fact that my first reaction was that something was done wrong shows you that I may be just a skootch paranoid about German laws.

We got up super, duper, extra early this morning to try to be to the DMV (or whatever it is here) by 7:30 when they opened. We went to grab our passports, and… where where they? We frantically checked every drawer, bag, cubby, couch cushion. What on earth could have happened to the darn things between now and when we last had them, in Barcelona?

A mild freak-out ensued, where I pictured us not being able to get back in the states next month, and the nightmare of government offices we’d have to navigate to try to get a new passport. Finally, after 15 minutes of searching, they were found - right in the drawer they were SUPPOSED to be, of course (just on the other side). Whew.

We hustled out a little later than we’d wanted and down to the office. Even though we’d spent a lot of time there the first time around, we got a little lost trying to find the right place. After a few minutes of typing into a computer (and yes, they needed our passports - thank goodness we’d found them!) she handed over the goods - two nice, crisp driver’s licenses with really terrible pictures. I mean, REALLY terrible. They don’t let you smile here for ID pictures - Germans hate smiling!

When Travis looked over his I said “Did they catch your point yet?” He laughed, “I don’t think so, but I don’t know how I’d be able to tell if they did!”