"D" is for "...

I am a citizen (and since some point in the early 1980s no longer a subject) of Her Majesty's polonium-polluted kingdom (surely queendom?), a fact I keep forgetting until I have to deal with some sort of officialdom such as crossing a border or purchasing a mobile phone SIM card.

The latter sort of transaction, where my vital details have to be entered into some computer system, inevitably enters a phase where the enteree starts flicking wildly through my passport looking for some vital information which is not recorded on the page which contains the usual vital information (name, date of birth, passport number, membership in terrorist organisations etc.). At this point I find it speeds things up to ask "Sie suchen bestimmt den Ausstellungsort?" ("Ausstellungsort" being the place of issue). In my previous passports, big solid black documents with a lingering air of empire about them, there was always a big stamp with the words "Newport, Gwent" in there somewhere, but my mass-produced, mercilessly standardised eurodocument bears only the cryptic abbreviation "D".

"D" is for "Düsseldorf", a city generally not known for being part of Queen Liz's realm. This is a recipe for confusion ("Sie sind Brite, wollen aber Ihren Paß in Düsseldorf bekommen haben? Sie können mir was erzählen!"). But it is true. The British Embassy in Germany, for whatever reason, has (or had) its passport producing department in that fair city on the Rhine, from which location it keeps British residents of Germany supplied with travel documentation.

Fortunately that kind of situation doesn't happen too often, and has always resolved itself after a lengthy explanation of my residence situation and the vagaries of the British passport issuing system, although with one particularly pingelige lady from the post office I had to threaten to call the embassy right there on my händy before she believed me.