Spending my birthday in Vancouver this year… not just to renew my passport

A few years ago I got to spend my 30th birthday in Vancouver – I wrote a post about how an older couple, without ever knowing it, helped me celebrate by playing Auld Lang Syne for me. It’s a story about how you’ll never know how much of an impact you might have on somebody else’s life (read it here).  On that trip I took some unique aerial photographs from one of my favourite Canadian cities. This year I got to go back to celebrate my 34th birthday, eat some sushi… and renew my passport.

Passport, you ask? Well, mine is about to expire. And since some countries will not permit you to enter if the remaining validity is less than 6 months, I decided to get my renewal in early. Besides, we all know governments move slowly. When I applied for my Canadian visa I had to wait several years before I got the green light to make my move across the Atlantic Ocean. Now that I’m here, renewing my Dutch passport has become equally challenging. With a Dutch consular office right in Calgary it used to…