After 44 years of leaving abroad, the stories in consulates, embassies, legations, high commissions, nunciatures (name for Vatican embassies) are innumerous. Here are some of the most interesting:

Waking-up the Soviet consul in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1990 at 12 noon on the way to the airport to catch the Aeroflot flight to Maputo, Mozambique, with stops in Moscow and Aden, Yemen, because my visa was signed by the Soviet Foreign Minister at the time...

First Thanksgiving ever was at US embassy in Praia, Cape Verde, West Africa, invited by my Peace Corps friends, with the turkey flown in by diplomatic pouch in a C-141 USAF plane...

French embassies parties always have the best food and cheese, flown in, anywhere in the world. The more remote the location the better. To get in, if you are not French, marry somebody French...

Requesting a French church marriage license (involving disparity of cult) in Mozambique, needed to receive the authorization from the local bishop and the Vatican Nuncio, with official translation from the French consul...

The best meal ever was at the Austrian consulate in Barbados, were the consulate happens to be installed inside a restaurant...

The best overnight stay in a consulate was at the Monaco consulate in Bordeaux, France, were the consulate happens to be installed inside a guesthouse...

The best reception locations, so far, it is a tie between the residence of the Swedish Consul in New York at a mansion on Park Avenue and the former residence of the Portuguese consul in New York, at the Dakota building on Central Park West, facing Central Park...

After spending all morning queuing at Ukranian embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, was told that I needed to go to the Czech post office across the street to pay for the visa by money order... strange, even more so when provided with the receipt noticed that I paid ten times more than the value on the receipt. That was sophisticated corruption...

When applying for a US diplomatic visa at the US embassy in Ottawa, I had one of the best US consular staff ever, he himself a third country national (non-US nor Canadian) and the best service ever...

The best ever Vice-Consul was in the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux, France, where after a vacation house fire all my documents were destroyed. Over the phone, he was able to solve all the paper work, so well that when I arrived at the consulate with my black and white instant photo he just glue it to my temporary travel document (passport) and I was done in 2 seconds...