Güten Täg fröm Bönn, Germäny (I knöw they dön't belöng büt I jüst löve the ümläüt!)

We made it out of Bangladesh but not with out a paying an arm, leg and baksheesh! Here's the short version. We tried to leave on April 19th which meant that I had over stayed my visa by 3 days. "Tee-ga-say" or "No problem" someone in the passport/immigration office told us. Just pay 500 Taka ($7) per day overstayed. We weren't sure that we were going to get on the flight in the first place (it was over booked) and were relieved once the ticketing agent cleared us. They also put our bags on board at no extra charge. Another worry as we were over the limit (according to Air India's website) with all the crap that we had purchased.

As I approached immigration, I had my taka all ready to go. The officer scanned my passport into the system, looked at me and said "Sorry, you can not leave the country." With out giving me a chance to speak, he pushed his chair back and said "Follow me." Unbelievable, I thought to myself. We were led to the supervisor's office who kindly explained to us that there was no such thing as a "penalty fee". They had no way to process the money and the only way that I could leave was to go to the passport/immigration office (downtown) and get the necessary documents (loosely translated as baksheesh the government). We missed the flight and spent another 2 hours at the airport waiting for them to pull our bags. It was a royal pain in the baksheesh to say the least.

Back at Sam and Heather's, we found out that there was a hartal that day and conveniently for us, the Awami league had another one planned for Thursday. Sam and Heather live in the Diplomatic Zone of Dhaka and we were therefore safe from any of the rioting but the passport/immigration office was in a hot zone. With Thursday out of the picture, next was Friday - an off day as Friday serves as their weekend. Saturday was a public holiday and Sunday turned out to be another hartal. The flight from Dhaka to Delhi only runs on Sun/Wed/Fri so we basically spent another week lounging around as we waited for a day where I could safely make my way to the passport office, pay the $100 extension fee and make our ausfahrt out of Bangladesh.

Money spent at this point was:

• $100 for the initial 14 day visa (Erin payed the same price but got 30 days
• $100 for my extension
• 200 taka per day penalty for each day overstayed (ended up being 1400 taka or $20)
• $30 each for our transit visa thru Delhi (we were only there for less than 12 hours but needed one to get our bags and transfer on to a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt).
  

Wednesday rolled around and when we got to the airport...we found out that the flight had been cancelled. Great! Luckily, they rescheduled it for Thursday morning. Got up on Thursday, went thru the entire process again, made the flight and finally got out of Bangladesh.

Once in India, the saga continued. We got a hotel close to the airport as we just needed a place to crash for 10 hours before the flight to Germany took off (at 2:20AM local time). We didn't mind spending the $110 for the comfort and convenience (cheapest hotel in the airport area) but it was only for 10 hours. Well, as stated in earlier posts, we're done backpacking. They waited until 2:00AM to clear us and as always, we were thankful to make it on as stand-by passengers. We threw our bags on the conveyor belt to be tagged and the agent looked at us with a frown on her face and said "Why do you have so much baggage? You're overweight." We asked by how much and she said 23 kilos. After punching some keys on her board, she looked at the screen, looked at us, looked back her screen and then informed us that the cost was going to 300 Euros ($366). Add that to the tally and we basically dropped $650 trying to get out of Bangladesh. I felt like I was going to baksheesh but we had no other option. So we paid the agent, boarded the plane and I spent the rest of the flight trying to convince myself that we still made out with all of the DVDs, software, clothes and gifts that we bought....yeah right.

Now in Germany, we've spent the last week in Bonn with the Schäfers. I met Thom and Eva in New Zealand during my travels in 1996 and have kept in touch ever since. They visited us in San Diego in '97 and then Erin and I visited them again in '01. Since then, they've had 3 girls. Johanna is the oldest at 8 followed by Louise, 6 and now Marlena who is just 7 weeks old. Luckily they all got their looks from their mom and they are the cutest things you dun did ever see.

Bonn has been a welcomed stop for us. On top of our reunion with the Schäfers (we almost thought we lost them) it was nice to get back to clean fresh air, modern comforts and western food. The people are a little bigger and the cars a little smaller, but it's a cute and quaint town that most would associate Europe with. It's also the birthplace of Ludwig Beethoven. We've spent the week catching up, getting to know the kids, reminiscing and enjoying the spring blossoms (when we arrived the temperature was 9°C over the weekend but has jumped up to 27°C). There's a festival over the weekend that we plan to attend and then we fly to Madrid on Sunday. Hopefully this time without the hitches.

FMP