We landed in Rome's Fiumicino airport at around 10pm. My mobile's battery was running low and the european adaptor I had bought at St Pancras station wasn't working. I couldn't recharge my mobile so I had to save all the juice I could. It made me feel uneasy as I worried that if something else had to happen to me, it would be the straw that broke the camel's back. I picked up my luggage, which took awfully long to get to the baggage claim despite the fact that we had to cross half the airport on foot to get to it, and made my way out to the arrivals lounge. I headed straight to the taxis, but got intercepted half way by someone dressed nice who claimed he was a taxi driver with a fixed rate. He asked me if I needed a taxi, and extremely
suspiciously I told him yes. I told him the hotel address, he took my case before I could have a second thought and started walking to his car. He turned out to be a chatterbox of an Albanian man, very nice, who in reality works for a valid taxi company that takes passengers to their respective destinations at a fixed price. They even have a stand or an office (not sure) at Fiumicino, which due to the late hour, was closed. Turns out he had his girlfriend in his car too, cause it was their 8th anniversary together, and following a meal at a nearby restaurant, he decided to take a passenger. So with another person in the car I felt even more safe. We had quite a good chat in the car, talking about a myriad of things. I got a long lecture on Albania and its economy and discussed stuff like football, italian TV, the japanese cartoons we grew up watching on italian TV, and obviously we could not help mention the recent demise of that big man - Raimondo Vianello. He got me to the hotel safe and sound, and I settled into a lush 4-star hotel room, had a good hot shower and crept into bed.

I didn't sleep that well that night. All those activities of the day had me wired up and I couldn't relax easily. I tossed and turned quite a bit but I did get some sleep. When I woke up I helped myself to a crossaint and nutella from the buffet breakfast, made myself a sandwich and went back to my room to pack up my things and get ready to head back to the airport. I had confirmed a return trip with the taxi driver the night before. I didn't want to bother with trains anymore, and we had agreed he'd pick me up at 9am, in order to get me to the airport on time for the noon flight. At 8:30am someone had already showed up, but it wasn't him. It was a colleague of his, someone who didn't utter a word during the long journey back to the airport. At least we passed through some scenic routes, though not all of it looked pleasant. We drove by the Coliseum and some other historical monuments, but also by a scrapyard and further on, a field with some junk thrown in, amongst which was a washing machine. I immediately started smelling the scent of home. I smiled.

The airport this morning was heaving. There were people sleeping on the floor, people sleeping on the benches. Pretty much everyone seemed to be a weary traveller, having travelled miles to reach this point. There were dozens of flights waiting to take off, and loads of them were already running late. I wasn't very hopeful I'd be going anywhere fast, yet the maltese flight kept showing that it would leave on time. Once I managed to find my check-in desk, I made my way, worrying that I'll have trouble using my emergency passport. At the check-in desk there wasn't any queue and I was wondering if I was going to have another quiet flight. The check-in girl eyed my document very suspiciously and asked me a million questions. Thankfully this was Italy, so explaining myself was a doddle. She did try to contact the police to verify that my emergency passport was correct, but got no answer to her phonecall.


So after a lot of wondering, she gave me the go-ahead. Just before she handed me over the boarding card, an older colleague of hers arrived, and she told him "You're right on time. I need to ask you something". My heart sank. I wondered if this guy would give me trouble, but he didn't. He gave me his blessing and off I trotted with boarding card in hand, past the security and onto the gate.

The flight back to Malta was packed, but good. We got home with a slight delay but without any trouble. I could finally collect my luggage, make my way out into the arrivals lounge where my husband and my little boy were waiting for me. I got lots of smiles and hugs and I couldn't have been happier to get back in our car and head home.

Next up: facing the insurance and the government departments (for ID, driving license and passport)

While discussing my situation with the police and while I was filing my report, my colleagues back at the office were hard at work trying to help me out. I was sent phone numbers and details of embassies, but I received a phone call directly from the Embassy itself telling me what I need to do. The report had to be completed in order for an emergency passport to be sent. In the meantime, they were giving instructions to my employers on how to send me some emergency cash. I was told to make sure the report is complete and to call them when this is done.

After a gruelling couple of hours of broken french and a million questions to which the answers don't matter, we had the report ready. My next question was, how was I going to get this report to the embassy? I had no money to make my way there and the policeman wasn't very sympathetic. He didn't offer any solution, even though he understood my predicament. You would have thought that in the year 2010, where a simple photocopier can make you photocopies, scans and even directly send faxes to anywhere in the world, including but not limited to (probably) Calcutta, yet a fax from the parisian aiport to the Champs Elysee is apparently an impossible feat. However, the embassy of Malta were aware of this, and the saints at my office arranged for money to be transferred to the embassy through the Maltese Foreign Office, and the embassy arranged for an emergency passport to be ready within the hour. I had everything delivered to me in person at the airport where we completed all the required documentation, took a couple of passport size photos from a photobooth at the groundfloor of the terminal building and by 1800 I was ready to check-in for my 1930 flight. The Ambassador himself came to ensure I was fine, along with his side-kick, who got me all the required documents. They were amazingly sweet, helpful and caring. I could have carried them home with me.

Once I was helped through check-in and security (emergency passports are obviously looked at suspiciously), I was once again on my own, with some euros in hand, a passport that would get me through Rome and back to Malta, and a boarding ticket out of France. With the money I could now afford to buy me a sandwich and a bottle of water (thank goodness I had a big breakfast that morning). In the meantime, my colleagues in Malta booked me into a hotel in Rome for the night and on a flight back to Malta the morning after, so I boarded the half-empty plane to Rome (I kept being surprised at how little crowd I kept seeing. Heathrow on a regular Thursday night is a much bigger nightmare than Charles De Gaulle after 4 days of cancelled flights. Makes you wonder), sat at the window seat in my emergency exit seat, looking and feeling pretty much like I just walked out of the night of the living dead, and off we went, flying in the right direction of home.