A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Queue Jumpers and Diplomatic Parking Scofflaws

by Dave Seminara on

The line of cars waiting to cross the border was, in fact, no line at all. It was an unruly scrum of cars, wide at the back end yet narrowing into a single line near the immigration booth, with battered old Yugos and brand new BMWs jockeying ahead, inch-by-inch, for supremacy.

We were waiting to enter Macedonia – Greek Macedonia, from Macedonia – Macedonian Macedonia, as in The Republic of Macedonia, or for Greeks, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. And as I sat in the logjam, wondering how to cut the line, I thought back to what Blake, my social sponsor at the American Embassy in Skopje, had said about the border.

“You don’t have to wait like all the other slobs,” he boasted. “As diplomats, we have the right to go right to the front of the line.”

And according to Blake there were other vehicular perks as well: park wherever you want, drive as fast as you like and zoom right through toll booths all over the country. But what Blake didn’t explain was how to cut the line at the border, and I didn’t ask, because at the time, it sounded like a very arrogant and stupid thing to do. Why would I cut the line at the border? Only a complete ass would do that, I thought. I didn’t join the Foreign Service because I wanted to be a scofflaw or line cutter, and the idea of drawing attention to myself by conspicuously cutting a line was not appealing. But I’m also highly impatient, and when I first traveled down to the Greek/Macedonian border and saw how long the line was, and how slowly it was moving, I quickly reconsidered my options. The time I’d save would be worth the momentary embarrassment.

But there were only two lanes open at the border, one heading in each direction, and there were scores of cars everywhere. On my first attempt at being a diplomatic line cutter, I was out of my depth and had no idea how to physically do it. So I sat in line like everyone else, plotting my next move.

After a few minutes, I saw a late model Mercedes Benz with tinted windows and diplomatic plates speed past the queue, then stop right before a large concrete median. A man hopped out of the passenger seat, said something to the Greek immigration officer in the booth and then, another Greek official came by and halted progress in the line and waived the diplomatic vehicle up to the booth to be serviced next. A-ha, I thought. So that’s how you do it.

But that was a beautiful new Mercedes Benz that commanded respect. I was driving a 1994 Nissan Altima with all four hubcaps missing, and a side view mirror that was held together with duck tape. I had the diplomatic plates, but I looked more like the assistant manager at Sanford & Son than a legit embassy official.

Nevertheless, I gave it a go, but when I tried it, a couple of cars started honking at me, making me feel like the bum that I was. I looked straight ahead, not wanting to make eye contact with any of the other drivers, and when I parked in front of the median and arrived, on foot, at the booth, the Greek official took a look at my car, then exhaled deeply, rolled his eyes and took a drag on his cigarette.

It appeared as though he planned to accommodate me, but unlike the previous VIP, there was clearly no rush for a low level official driving a junky old car like mine. Over the course of the next two years, I became far more adept at cutting lines at the various borders but I never felt very good about it. Not bad enough to stop the practice, mind you, just a little guilty.

The public has a general perception of diplomats as scofflaws who invoke diplomatic immunity at any opportunity to cover their asses. I think this perception stems from the bad press foreign diplomats in the U.S. get each year due to unpaid parking tickets, particularly in New York, where some foreign diplomats who work at the United Nations tend to park wherever they damn well please.

Last year, the Freakonomics blog posted the following table of outstanding parking tickets for NYC and D.C.-based diplomats.

New York

Egypt – $1,929,142
Kuwait – $1,266,901
Nigeria – $1,019,998
Indonesia – $692,200
Brazil – $608,733

Washington, D.C.

Russia – $27,200
Yemen – $24,600
Cameroon – $19,520
France – $19,520
Mauritania – $8,070

And the Daily Telegraph posted their own league table for diplomatic scofflaws in Great Britain.

China, 257 fines outstanding, £27,690 owing
Afghanistan, 245 fines outstanding, £25,820 owing
Turkey, 253 fines outstanding, £25,590 owing
Saudi Arabia, 169 fines outstanding, £15,440 owing
Cyprus, 140 fines outstanding, £14,500 owing
Pakistan, 128 fines outstanding, £13,120 owing
France, 120 fines outstanding, £11,900 owing
Ghana, 107 fines outstanding, £10,760 owing
Uzbekistan, 102 fines outstanding, £9,680 owing
Malaysia, 89 fines outstanding, £8,950 owing
Ukraine, 86 fines outstanding, £8,260 owing
Russia, 71 fines outstanding, £7,920 owing

In 2006, a study by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, economists at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that diplomats from the world’s most corrupt countries were also the most likely to be parking scofflaws. I think there’s some truth to that.

I think my social sponsor in Skopje, Blake, was the only Foreign Service Officer I knew who parked their car wherever they pleased. At all three overseas missions I served at, we received very clear messages from each front office specifically warning us against this kind of boorish behavior.

I’m biased but I think that American diplomats are among the world’s best behaved. Not because we’re the most virtuous, but because, as Americans, all eyes are on us overseas, waiting for us to slip up. The stereotype is that we’re arrogant and ignorant of other cultures, so we need to work a little harder to overcome that.

I did my part in the posts I served at – Skopje, Port of Spain and Budapest – by parking on the sidewalks, just like everyone else and cutting the lines at the borders in the nicest way possible.

Read more from “A Traveler In The Foreign Service” here.

[Photo via Alan Cleaver on Flickr]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Inconsiderate Chadian Rebels Fail To Scuttle My Holiday Plans

by Dave Seminara on

The Foreign Service isn’t a normal, 9-5 occupation, where one can check out after leaving the office each day. The benefits outweigh the negatives for most, but almost every Foreign Service Officer (FSO) faces moments when they’re forced to decide if they want to prioritize their career at the expense of their personal life.

Most who want to become an Ambassador or Deputy Chief of Mission at an overseas post or high ranking officer in Washington, end up having to do damage control on the family side at one time or another as they pursue their careers. Others who are content to muddle through and pick up a steady paycheck can sometimes, but not always, keep the after hours duties to a minimum.

I faced my first real career crossroads in the Foreign Service several years ago as the State Department’s Desk Officer for Chad & The Central African Republic, when Chadian rebels rudely staged a coup attempt just as I was about to leave Washington for a well deserved vacation in Sicily with my wife, Jen.Coup attempts in Chad are about as predictable as a “Love Boat” episode, so I wasn’t immediately panicked when I heard the news from Kathleen, our political officer in N’Djamena early one morning, less than 48 hours before our departure for Sicily. But my boss, whom I’ll call Cleopatra, just for fun, acted like the love of her life had just told her she was a one-night-stand when I reminded her of my impending trip later that day.

“You’re not going to Sicily,” she commanded. “Humpty Dumpty’s about to fall and I need you here.”

It should be said here that my boss had an unhealthy obsession with Chad’s President, Idriss Deby. Cleopatra was responsible for overseeing well over a dozen countries in Africa, but she was fixated on Chad. President Deby’s rule was more or less a model for bad governance, so she was right to hope that he’d go, but my view was a bit more nuanced.

There are plenty of heavy hitters in and out of government in Washington who believe that, as the world’s lone superpower, the United States can influence and direct developments in every corner of the globe. I don’t subscribe to that theory and I think that we get ourselves in trouble too often by meddling in the affairs of other countries. I agreed that Deby needed to go, but felt that it was up to the Chadians, and not us, to find a way to get rid of him.

I promised Cleopatra that I’d look into postponing my trip but made no promises, as I knew that it would be complicated and possibly expensive. Also, the situation in Chad was so unstable that there was no real way to safely reschedule the trip, since we had no idea when or if the situation would stabilize.

I looked into changing our airline tickets and hotel reservations but discovered that it would cost a bundle to change the airline tickets and some of the hotel reservations couldn’t be cancelled with so little notice. My wife thought that there was no way in hell we should cancel the trip and I agreed, though I dreaded telling Cleopatra the following day.

To pre-empt her concerns, I found a veteran Chad expert from S/CRS, the State Department’s Office of Stabilization and Reconstruction who had recently made trips to Chad and was well versed on the situation to cover for me. She was eager to get a taste for the work of a desk officer – which is kind of like being a middleman who coordinates policy between Washington and the post – and her boss graciously allowed her to assume my role while I’d be gone.

Cleopatra had an unhealthy habit of screaming my name out when she wanted to speak to me, rather than picking up her telephone and calling me, and, after I heard her yell out, “DAVVVVVVVVID!” for the first time on my last day before the trip, I knew it was time to break the news to her.

I told her about the replacement and promised that I’d check in every day via email in case any issues arose, but still, she pouted and acted like a jilted lover. In the span of 24 hours, I’d gone from being her favorite person in the office to a pariah.

After the uncomfortable conversation was over, I went back to my tiny little windowless office and took stock of the situation. I felt bad about proceeding with the trip, but knew that the situation in Chad was going to proceed apace no matter where I was. We had a fully functional embassy in Chad and I was leaving them with a more than competent replacement.

The preceding year had been the worst of my life, as I had spent months struggling with a serious illness that was hard to diagnose. I had been looking forward to visiting Sicily because I wanted to trace my ancestry and because I needed a break.

I decided to go on the trip, but in order to please Cleopatra, I brought my suitcase in to work and planned to work up until the time I needed to head to Dulles for my flight that evening. I spent the afternoon with my replacement and when it came time to leave the office at the end of the day, I ducked into Cleopatra’s office to say goodbye.

“You aren’t really going are you?” she asked, despite the fact that I was carrying a rolling suitcase.

I reminded her that I’d be checking in every day via email but she just sat at her desk, looking at me in disbelief. She asked me to draft a paper about one of the rebel leaders whom we knew nothing about and looked inconsolable when I told her I had a flight to catch. She was single with no kids and I wondered if there was anything in the world she cared about other than her job.

“Cleopatra,” I said. “This is just another false alarm in Chad. Believe me, Deby’s still going to be in office long after you and I aren’t working here any more.”

History proved me to be correct. That coup attempt and others fizzled and Deby is still in office, longer after both Cleopatra and I left the State Department. But my relationship with my boss was never the same and my next evaluation from her was good but not great. (And in the Foreign Service, only complete reprobates get bad evaluations, so good, not great ones don’t take you very far.)

My wife and I had a great time in Sicily, though, hitchhiking to the villages my grandparents came from, enjoying the food and wine as though it was our job, and trying hard to forget about Chad and Cleo, despite daily missives from her to my gmail account. When I was asked to choose between travel and work, I chose travel, but I don’t think many other FSO’s would have done the same.

Read more from “A Traveler in the Foreign Service” here.
[Photo via Opendemocracy on Flickr]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Rooms By the Hour In Belgrade And An Insane Taxi Driver from Novi Sad

by Dave Seminara on

Have you ever met a taxi driver who was more interested in showing you staged photos of him with his cars than getting you to the airport to catch a flight? No? Well, you’ve probably never met Novica Jurisic, a Serbian taxi driver from Novi Sad, whose most prized possessions are kept in the trunk of his Mercedes Benz taxi.

When I worked at the American Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia in the early aughts, my wife and I took advantage of every long weekend to travel around the region. But Skopje isn’t much of a flight hub, so it’s tricky to see much in a three-day weekend, and flight schedules are inconvenient at best.

Very early one Saturday morning we caught a 6 A.M. flight to Belgrade, on JAT, the old Yugoslav National Airline that, at least at that time, still inexplicably allowed passengers to put large suitcases in empty seats around the cabin. On the way to Belgrade we decided on a whim to spend just one day in the city and then take an overnight train to Budapest.

After a delightful day of exploring Belgrade, we were exhausted, after having gotten up at 4 A.M. for our flight, but we had six hours to kill until our train left at midnight. We came across the Hotel Beograd a place near enough to the station to be convenient, and shabby looking enough to have hourly rates.I had checked out a room at the Beograd before, after arriving in the city late at night, alone, on my 30th birthday. But I could not bring myself to celebrate the auspicious occasion in a room with sloping beds, dirty, velvety bedspreads with miscellaneous stains and rotary telephones, so I cut bait and went elsewhere.

There is never a graceful way to enquire about hourly rates at a hotel, particularly when you arrive with a member of the opposite sex and are encircled by numerous loitering and inquisitive men. The desk clerk, a middle aged man with thick glasses who wore an unfriendly scowl, wanted about $12, but would only let us stay in the room until 20.00. In my rudimentary Serbian/Macedonian I told him that I might need a bit longer, say, until 22.00 or 23.00. He scoffed at the request and the loitering men began to laugh and chatter about us.

Why does he need so much time with her, is what they were probably saying.

We haggled a bit and he eventually agreed to let us stay in our room until 21.00, enough time for us to take a nap, in theory. The clerk asked for our passports and it suddenly dawned on me that I had left my regular tourist passport in Skopje and had only a black diplomatic passport. After our public negotiation over the day rate at this shabby hotel, I was certain that pulling out this passport would cause a stir and sure enough it did, as the men began to howl.

Can you believe the American! He’s a diplomat and he comes here with a woman, doesn’t want to pay for the room for a whole night and then tries to haggle!

Even though our objectives were pure, I felt dirty in our sweaty, cramped and noisy room at the Beograd. My wife was certain that she saw some bloodstains on her twin bed, but mine had nothing worse than a few hairs and some holes in the sheets. The room was so hot, we had to keep the window open, and the traffic outside kept me awake. The lock on the door didn’t work so we barricaded a chair up against the door and I paced around the suffocating, dismal room until check out time, feeling oddly like Robert De Niro in his threadbare apartment in the movie Taxi Driver.

After a day and a half enjoying all of the cultural delights of Budapest, including foot-long meatball subs at Subway, and other treats unavailable in Skopje, it was time to figure out how to get back to Belgrade in time for our 21.00 flight. I assumed we’d have no problem, but both the bus and the train left at 14.00, with the bus arriving in Belgrade after our flight and the train arriving just an hour before departure. We looked into renting a car, but no Hungarian rental car company would allow us to drop off in Serbia.

We decided to take the train and then race into a taxi to the airport and hope for the best. But as we approached Novi Sad, a fellow passenger advised us that we should get out in Novi Sad, and then take a taxi directly to the Belgrade airport to catch our flight. He called a taxi company, we agreed to pay 50€ and a man bearing a sign with our names was there at the train station waiting to pick us up. Perfect! Right?

Our new friend on the train told us that Novi Sad and Belgrade were connected by a four lane highway and advised us that a taxi could get us to the airport in an hour, while the train took 90 minutes just to get to downtown Belgrade. The main introduced himself as Novica, and handed us his business card, which showed him all dressed up in a royal blue suit befitting a rap star attending a baptism posing in front of two Mercedes Benzes. (see photo)

As we approached his car, he pointed to a white Benz that was perhaps 8-10 years old but very nicely polished.

“Mercedez Benz,” he said proudly pointing to the car. “You know it?”

We slowly made our way in and then out of Novi Sad as Novica narrated his Serbian and very rudimentary English. From what I understood, Novi Sad was a great city and we were making a huge mistake by not stopping and spending time in the town. I assured him that we would be back another time, while reminding him that we were in a hurry and had a flight to catch.

About twenty minutes into the ride, my wife and I began to mutter concerns to each other. “Ask him why we aren’t getting on the highway,” Jen instructed me. I tried asking him, but he just kept telling us not to worry and that he knew what he was doing.

We were on a busy, two-lane country road that began to ascend up a mountain. Eventually we saw a sign indicating that we had entered some kind of national park. As our concerns grew, Novica began to banter about the park, and what a great tourist destination it is. I started to look up some words in a Serbian phrasebook and managed to say: “SEGA, NE TOURIST! AVION AERODROM, SEGA!” Which means, “Now, no tourist, flight, airplane, now!”

Novica seemed stung by my scolding. He had taken us on a massive detour in the mistaken belief that we had wanted to take a scenic route to the Belgrade airport.

After another half hour on a sickeningly twisty country road, we eventually came to the entrance to the highway, which pleased us immensely. Right after going through the toll area and getting our ticket, though, Novica inexplicably pulled over and began rummaging around for something in his trunk. I looked at the gas gauge and noticed that he was almost out of gas.

A minute later Novica emerged, smiling and brandishing a few photo albums. The first album was filled with pictures of him in various poses in front of his two taxis. In each photo he was pimped out with his dark glasses along with his royal blue, three-piece suit or a white vest along with white dress shirt and white dress pants. We had to laugh.

The second photo album contained photos from various weddings he had been the driver for. And the final one contained photos of him at various radical Serb political demonstrations. He appeared waving placards denouncing sending Serb war criminals to The Hague. In the photos you could see bunches of scary looking Chetniks with mean faces and long straggly beards. So this is why he is taking us on a scenic route, I thought. It was less then three years after NATO forces bombed Belgrade and this was his revenge.

I asked Novica what all the political photos were about and he seemed a bit embarrassed, saying that these days all he cared about was business, not politics.

Most of the cars on the highway seemed to be zooming past us; the speed limit was 70, but Novica was only going 50. We had no idea how far we were from the Belgrade airport and it was just about an hour before flight time. After a detour to get gas, Jen finally lost her patience and loudly chided him to go faster, while tapping her watch insistently. Probably only a minute later, the airport actually came into sight.

We could hardly believe it, and Novica made a point of telling us that he had told us so all along. Of course the post script to this tale writes itself: we were there 40 minutes before our scheduled departure, but the flight took off two hours late anyways, so we could have stayed on the train and saved ourselves the 50€. But then we wouldn’t have met Novica from Novi Sad.

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: A ‘Trailing Spouse’ Speaks Out

by Dave Seminara on

One of the most common questions I receive about life in the Foreign Service is: what will my spouse do? With that in mind, I invited my wife, Jennifer, who worked while I served overseas in Macedonia, Trinidad and Hungary, to offer her thoughts on what it’s like to be a “trailing spouse.”

Jennifer Seminara

I really had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to be a Foreign Service (FS) spouse. My boyfriend of five years joined the Foreign Service and asked me to marry him right before he left Chicago for his training in Washington. I didn’t know where he was headed but a life overseas as a diplomat’s wife seemed exciting and I was in.

I was in graduate school at the time, pursuing a master’s degree in public health and had grand ideas about working on public health programs in developing countries. At the time, I didn’t realize how difficult it is for the “trailing spouse” to have a career.

Being a FS spouse can be a great opportunity to stay home and raise children or pursue hobbies. Housing is covered by the U.S. Government, which makes it much easier to get by on one income, especially when living in a country with a low cost of living. Having a career as a FS spouse, however, is not easy for most.For those that would like to work, Eligible Family Member (EFM) positions are available at most embassies but these administrative and/or low level (and usually low paying) jobs can be difficult to secure since there aren’t enough jobs for everyone who wants one. I worked as the Community Liaison Office Coordinator at two posts; there were also EFM positions for Consular Associates (which requires CON-GEN training) and Office Management Specialists (OMS/administrative assistants) in various departments.

My CLO predecessor at our first post described the position as the cruise director for the embassy. There are the more serious and important parts of the job, which include providing information to newly assigned employees and families, advocating for employees and families, advising post management on quality of life and reporting to the Family Liaison Office in Washington, D.C., on education and employment at post, but a large part of the job is to build community spirit and enhance morale.

In other words, the CLO plans a lot of parties, happy hours and all kinds of events to help maintain American traditions (super bowl parties, Easter egg hunts, BBQs, trick or treating, visits by Santa, etc.) and tours to help Americans get to know the host culture. I really enjoyed being a CLO but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting to do as a career and the salary I earned was far below what I could have been making in the U.S. in my field.

Spouses who would rather work outside of the embassy have limited options. Despite reciprocity agreements, which the U.S. has with a number of countries, it’s difficult for many spouses to secure gainful employment at many posts around the world. Even when spouses have the legal right to work in a country, many lack the local language skills needed to find jobs.

Spouses are entitled to take language training at the Foreign Service Institute but many can’t afford to devote months to classroom study due to financial or family issues and those who do still may not be able to achieve the fluency needed to get jobs. Also, finding a job in many foreign countries is all about networking and who you know, and if you don’t know anyone and can’t speak the local language, you’ll have an uphill climb. And even if you can find a job on the local economy, salaries in many countries can be as low as $500 or $1,000 per month.

FS spouses that tend to have the most luck finding work are often in fields where they can find a U.S. job that will allow them to work remotely. Teachers are always in demand, as there are international schools everywhere and you need not know the local language to teach at most of them. Personal trainers can find work in some posts, as can nurses and development workers.

For spouses that don’t find jobs, it can be difficult to adapt to life overseas. Foreign Service Officers (FSO’s) have a network of Americans to interact with at the embassy, but the stay at home spouse can feel isolated and bored, especially if they don’t speak the local language well. In a way, they’re the ones who are truly living in the local culture, while their spouses are in an English-speaking, American bubble at work.

Up until the 1950s, the wives of FSO’s were given formal evaluations along with their husbands, and spouses who weren’t viewed as being good hostesses – planning and hosting representational events – could negatively impact their husbands’ careers. While that’s now ancient history, some spouses do feel subtle pressure to attend all sorts of cocktail parties and events that might seem glamorous but are actually quite boring.

Most trailing spouses are female and posts with large expatriate communities have plenty of groups they can join, and a lot of women manage to forge their own networks easily. But trailing men often have a harder time, because some feel awkward joining female dominated clubs or groups, and men with no jobs tend to feel a loss of identity more acutely than women do.

But despite all the personal drawbacks, and career sacrifices, being a FS spouse can also be a lot of fun. Many spouses make really close friends overseas and become part of social circles that are tighter than the ones they had at home. Since all expats are by nature away from their lifelong friends and relatives, everyone has an incentive to be open to meeting new people and making friends.

Last, but definitely not least, is the fact that life overseas can be more exciting than life in the U.S. If you’re an adventurous person who is curious about the world, you’ll enjoy having the opportunity to experience a new culture, not as a tourist but as a local. And if you love to travel, living overseas will open up possibilities that would be impossible when based in the U.S.

If you want to live overseas, but aren’t sure if you could do it on your own, doing it as a Foreign Service family is the way to go. You’ll have a U.S. mailing address, so you can order products online to your heart’s content, you’ll have a network of people at the embassy to help you navigate the local culture, and you’ll have free housing and education for your kids.

And for those in countries with a low cost of living, you can afford the kind of household staff – cooks, cleaners, nannies, gardeners – that would be impossible in the U.S. Some get a little carried away and get so addicted to this sort of neo-Colonial lifestyle that they don’t want to return to Washington, where they have to live the kind or ordinary middle class lives they left behind before they joined the Foreign Service.

Read more from “A Traveler in the Foreign Service” here.

[Photo by Dave Seminara]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Making Peace With Malta (Part 2)

by Dave Seminara on

I was sitting aboard a battered old bus in Valletta, Malta’s capital, on my way to search for Mario Cacciottolo, a retired Maltese diplomat who sent me a gentle rebuke after I misrepresented the country by dressing up like Colonel Gaddafi in a grammar school model U.N. in Buffalo, New York, in 1986. It was an insane quest, but I felt like I had to try to find him, so I could apologize in person, and let him know that I intended to correct the mistake I made all those years before.

(Read part 1 of this story here.)

On board, I showed the address I’d found for Mario in the phone book to a woman sitting next to me and she was able to tell me where to get off the bus, but couldn’t provide further details on how to find Xmiexi (shh-mee-she) Street. I ambled around what appeared to be an old, working class neighborhood lost in time, showing people Mario’s address like a lost child.”Ah, shmee-she street,” they’d say. “You’re very close!”

But no one seemed to know precisely where it was. I asked again at a shop that sold delicious looking pastizzi for 23 cents, and a woman in a dirty apron led me across the street to confer with a friend who directed me to a police station to ask for further help. Feeling like perhaps Il Homa really was just a dream that wasn’t a real address, I flagged down a taxi, but alas, he had never even heard of the street.

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Inside the police station, I approached a bored looking officer sitting at a counter. Rather than simply asking for directions, I decided to tell him my story, just to gauge his reaction to my quest. Like most Maltese, he spoke English, and listened patiently as I told my tale. As he studied my letter from Mario, I waited for his reaction, but got none. Instead, he looked at me like I was crazy and then proceeded to give me extremely complex directions.

“You go up this street,” he said, vaguely pointing behind him. “Continue on until you see a mailbox – then look for a little set of stairs on the right. That’ll take you to St. Luigi Street, go up and take the first set of stairs on your left. That will lead you right to Shmee-she street.”

I wrote it all down but felt intimated, so I flagged another taxi. But the second driver appeared even more confused than the first. “I have never heard of this place,” he said.

I followed the police officer’s instructions, and after climbing the second set of stairs came upon a street where all the tidy little newish homes had names rather than numbers. I assumed it was Xmiexi Street and felt triumphant a moment later when a passerby confirmed it. I walked up the street, butterflies in my stomach, taking note of every house name. Some were in Maltese, but others, like “April Showers” and “Goodfellas” were in English. Halfway up the street, I saw a home on my left called Il Homa, but felt a wave of disappointment as the place looked dark and empty.

I rang the bell several times but no one answered. I went to the home next door on the right, rang the bell and a woman answered in Maltese on the intercom.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you know Mario next door?”

“Who?” she asked.

“Mario Cacciottolo,” I said. “He lives next door to you.”

She said she just moved in and didn’t know him. I told her I had a gift I wanted to leave for him and asked if she could come outside so I could explain. A few moments later, she called out to me from her side porch, up on the second floor.

I looked up and struggled to explain my story from a distance. After hearing the Cliff Notes version, she said, “You are in the United Nations?”

“No, no, it was the Model United Nations,” I said, feeling ridiculous. “Back in 1986. Mario sent me this letter.”

I held up the letter, and then the news clipping with my photo, circa 1986, and the woman burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know him and I can’t help.”

And with that she went back in her house. I tried the house to the left of Il Homa and a man in his 70s came outside to speak with me.

“Mario moved a few years ago,” he said, as my heart sank.

The man explained that Mario moved to a town I didn’t quite catch the name of. Apparently it was nowhere near Valletta and I had just 2 hours before my ship sailed for Catania. I left the man a folder with the letter and clippings, a note from me, and a business card, along with the chocolates I bought for him. In my note to him, I apologized to Mario and told him that I hoped to correct the wrong impression I’d given of Malta back in ’86, as he asked me to in the letter. I asked him to send me an email or a letter. The man promised to pass the items on to Mario and I left wondering if I’d ever hear from him.

I didn’t find Mario, but I was fortunate to strike up a conversation with a gentleman who worked at Valletta’s archeological museum who was able to help me understand Maltese politics, circa 1986. When I showed him my documents, he had a good laugh.

“I’m not surprised they were angry at you,” he said. “The truth is that we’re a bit defensive and we don’t really like Arabs.”

The man’s cousin is a former political leader of the country and he asked me not to use his name in the story. He said that Malta’s Prime Minister at the time was Carmen Misfud Bonnici, a socialist who won a disputed election that touched off a period of political violence in the country.

Bonnici forged strong ties with the Soviet Union, Gaddafi, N. Korea and other communist states. Relations with the U.S. were frosty, at best. There was an open campaign against Catholic churches in the country, some were raided and vandalized as were newspapers that were critical of the government.

As the teachers at my little Catholic school in Buffalo were wondering about the somewhat aggressive tone in the letter we received, the streets of Valletta were awash in protests – some broken up violently with police firing on and killing demonstrators in some cases. We had no clue, but the country was deeply divided. In 1990, conservatives took power and relations with the U.S. improved. The country has made great strides in the last two decades, managing to grow its tourism industry and joining the EU in 2004, but Bonnici, now retired, still publicly agitates for Malta to pull out of the EU and go back to the old days.

But that’s not going to happen. Malta’s future is in the EU and the increasing flow of tourists into the country means that gaffes like the one I made years ago are unlikely to happen again. When I turned up at our model U.N. in Buffalo representing Malta as a Colonel Gaddafi look-alike, no one batted an eyelash, or rebuked me for being dead wrong. These days, if a student tried it, they’d certainly be laughed out of the room.

More than a quarter of a century late, it’s time for me to correct the false impression I gave about Malta. Malta is a beautiful, independent European country with a fantastic climate and friendly people – people who dress in modern fashions. I had no idea, but now I do. Sorry, Mario. Please drop me a line someday. I owe you a beer.

Read Part 1 of this story here.

Read Part 3 of this story here.

Read more from “A Traveler In The Foreign Service” here.

[All photos by Dave Seminara]