I wrote about the new rules of the Dutch passport a while ago, that it wouldn’t be so easy to renew the passport because the honorair consulate in Hawaii is not longer allowed to renew passports somewhere this year because of the new fingerprint rules and such, and that I will have to fly to the mainland US, or get my passport renewed in the Netherlands when I would be there.
It is something very nice again from the Dutch government, even more because I have heard that people also need to pick their passports up again at the location where they renewed their passports (they normally send them), this because they need to check on the fingerprints inside the passports, if they’re made correctly or not. That’s going to be fun, so we either have to return to the mainland after a certain amount of time, or we have to be lucky and receive it in the Netherlands before you leave the country again. The result: double costs. Like I said in my post back then, it will cost us thousands of dollars (or Euro’s, whatever you want) for real if we need to do this within the US. (And another ‘nice’ fact: Foreign Affairs is saying that the machines for the fingerprints are too expensive, or something similar, and that they cannot install them everywhere for this reason… but what seems to be really happening: the ministry of internal affairs is paying for them and not the ministry of Foreign Affairs.. so what about that? Foreign Affairs doesn’t even have those costs as they said in the beginning.. it is really outragious. hoe vind je die? Die extra kosten zijn er dus helemaal niet.. I think it is becoming a more and more scandalous story.
But oh well, I thought to myself, about a week ago, that it would be wise to renew my passport already as I would still be able to do this within Honolulu (until somewhere in September, normally it would be until the end of June but they are delayed in the process). My passport is then valid for another five years (why isn’t it valid for ten years, like in most countries?), and when they give us troubles in The Hague when we request a passport for our daughter later on, then we do not have to go to the mainland within a few months because I would have to get a new passport myself. We would still have some years time until we need to renew my passport and then we can also request the new passport for our daughter. She will get an American passport right away so a Dutch passport isn’t needed right away.
And so I did. I called the Dutch Honoraire Consulate in Honolulu last week to schedule an appointment for today. They’re located in a big officebuilding, near the Aloha Tower (there where the boat parade was and where I made a video of the Queen Mary 2).
We (Michelle joined me, and even though it was not really needed, it does make it more fun) had to be there at 11 this morning, and we could’ve been there at 10.45 AM, but unfortunately we walked pass the building. This happened because the building showed number 1000 while we had to be at number 745. We knew the office was located on the 7th floor, so everything which was lower, was automatically not something we looked at, and so we passed those smaller buildings quite easily. When we checked the numbers, we saw the number 900 something, and we thought it could take a while until we would be at our number, until we suddenly were in the 1000’s again… yeaahhh, wait a second… that’s not right, it was going up…. Right, our conclusion was that we had to walk back and probably missed something. It turned out that the lower buildings, which we initially passed, were in the 800’s and that we did need to get the first building. And what do you think? It turns out that this was indeed number 745 but this number was hiding a bit, especially because the number 1000 was quite big and catchy. Hahaha, yeah that went smooth. We went inside and up to the 7th floor in a really fast elevator (you really notice that your bloodpressure changes, you will really be dizzy for a bit after the elevator stops).
Once we got in, I pushed the little bell on the front desk and an employee of the consulate came to the front, it turned out that this person would also be the one who handled the passport renewal for me. She took me to a seperate room, a bit like a meetingroom (they’re really in between other offices, in a big officebuidling, where they have some space, it really looks like some kind of company when you see it like that, it really does not look like something which you think of when you think of a consulate.. then again, it is a honoraire consulate, of course, so they’re already smaller). Here I gave her my papers, the passport and the passport (which were 55 dollar for 9 pieces, by the way (I just needed two of them but they gave me 9 haha), they’re so expensive because the Dutch format is different than the American passport photo format and so people have to go to a special photographer, and when you only have one official recognized photographer on the island, then you can expect that they can ask you what they want, of course).
Anyways, I talked a bit more with the consulate employee, mostly about the upcoming birth and how things would go when we wanted to apply for a passport for her, and of course about the whole deal of the passports what the Netherlands is doing right now. She said that she has hope that they will have more machines available later on, and that they would renew passports again for the Dutch citizens because, like she also said, there are more Dutch citizens in Hawaii then you would expect (she gave an example of the one time that they needed a person on the Big Island who would be able to speak both Dutch and Indonesian, and it aparantly had a lot of replies from people who were interested, and this was pretty specific because of the Indonesian part. And it seems to be like this on all the islands, there’s really a great deal of Dutchies here… it makes it pretty messed up that the Netherlands is leaving all these people alone with their passports, there’s enough people who are not able to fly to the mainland or the Netherlands but still need their passports). She also said that, even though there are other HC’s being closed, that she does not expect that Honolulu will be closed so easily, because, for example, what if someone loses his or her passport, then they would not be able to leave these islands as they cannot take a plane to the mainland.
And we talked about some more things next to this. Michelle told me later that I am pretty talkative at some moments haha. Poor child, she couldn’t do anything else but wait until I was done talking.
I have to say that the people on the Honoraire Consulate were very friendly. I will receive my passport again within two to six weeks (normally it would take about two weeks but because of the whole thing of the change to the new way of renewing passports, it might take a bit longer so they take it a bit wider), and oh well, I don’t need my passport right away so that’s ok.
And that was the story of my passport renewal, for now at least haha.
We also fed some fishes at the Aloha Tower today and we made a short video about the Pali Highway, when I brought Michelle to her work later today, but I will write more about this later on.. probably somehwere tomorrow or the day after that, it depends because I still need to convert and upload the video’s to Youtube. So, some patience please 
