bright blue vending machine for bike inner tubes — This isn’t a vending machine for passport photos. It’s for bike inner tubes. © Laurel Decher, 2018.

One day, I was trying to renew my passport and couldn’t get my photo the right size.

Germany has automats for passport photos, but–of course–they follow the German passport requirements, not the American ones.

To get my ear the right size for the U.S., (Why are they so interested in ears? Never mind. I don’t want to know) I overrode all the WARNING alerts.

Then the total photo size or the white border or something was wrong, so I called the Embassy and asked what to do.

“This is an overseas post,” the lady said.

“Oh?” I didn’t quite know what that meant.

“Go ahead and send it in,” she said.

This is an overseas post. We have special status because it isn’t always possible to follow all the rules at the same time. The German equivalent–especially popular when parking a car in a semi-legal space–is: “Es geht nicht anders.” [Translation: It doesn’t work any other way.]

This blog is about what it’s like to live and write in a place where you don’t always know how to follow the rules for more than one country at a time.

Thanks for reading!