haven

March 4th, 2006. Dublin Airport, my 17th birthday.

dgassa

July 1957. I was eight years old and shared a passport with my mother and younger brother. Arrived in Bremerhaven, Germany after 2 weeks on a slow freighter from New Orleans.

mari5

Interesting and fun read!
Mine was 1971, London..a 5 day business and fun stopover enroute to Dakar, Senegal where we were to live for 3 years. We had 3 wonderful children, ages 8,9,10 and a DOG (yes she stayed at Heathrow in the "enroute" kennels for the 5 days,)
Those passports were good for 5 years. Husband got a full passport of stamps, and we all had to renew at the Embassy in Lisbon toward the end of our 2 years living there.

StCirq

Frankfurt, Germany....December 10, 1971. Auditioned and was chosen as a singer/dancer for a USO Tour to keep Our Boys overseas on military bases happy over the holidays because Bob Hope was sick that year. Spent 6 weeks in Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium singing with 5 other young women and a band half-naked (well, the women were, anyway) in places like airplane hangars and mess halls.

Memories are many, but the absolute best were: 1) singing for a large group of Italian soldiers on an outdoor stage in Bergamo in the snow wearing (I kid you not) glittery paper mini-dresses and having them throw bunches of roses at us after the performance was over, 2) playing a German slot machine at a bar and winning 500 Deutsche Marks which was a fortune at that time and age, and 3) breaking away from my group on Christmas Eve in Venice - it was snowing and more magical than you could ever believe to my 22-year-old eyes. I followed my ears to some little side-alley-lost trattoria that was open and serving dinner and had not the best meal of my life but probably the most memorable, with the entire family doting on me and being amazed that this young, alone, intrepid American girl had found her way to them all by herself on Christmas Eve in the snow. I still remember the frost on the windows of that trattoria and the rosy faces of the owners and other guests who hosted me as if I were a long lost member of the family.

How could I not become a Europhile after such an introduction, eh?

rosetravels

StCirq - that's a great story! My family was stationed in Germany in 1971.

My first passport was 1959. I was six months old and my mother was traveling with my sister, age 2, and me from Washington State to Ankara, Turkey. We were joining my father who was stationed there.

We flew to New York, then the 3 of us went to New Jersey to buy a car to ship overseas. The extra special part was that I had just learned to crawl and insisted upon practicing up and down the aisle. Can you imagine the torture that trip must have been?

I don't remember anything about our 2 years in Turkey unfortunately, but the photos are great.

trafaelwyr

The very first date stamped in my passport was 1974. My family and I were moving to Germany (dad was Army). As I was just a little kid at the time, my dad had to sign the passport on my behalf. The actual stamp is a bit of a mystery to me...it's partly in German and in English. Anyways, maybe someone knows what I'm talking about. The first real entry stamp was when we visited England in April 1979 and we arrived via ferry at Folkstone.

Jennifer_Khoh

I had my first passport stamp from France on April 8th, 1975. It was a very memorable moment as I was only nine years old. Traveling was new to me and that trip which took me from England, all over Europe, Middle East and South Asia will always stick firmly in my mind. I even wrote a book about it. In the end there were nine stamps from that trip with all varied degrees of interest for me! Love traveling!

seafox

Accompanying minor 7/1/1959 ,Havana... we were en route from Panama to NYC is was about 6 weeks old....first passport of my own 7/1/1975. JFK to Frankfurt with friends for a crazy summer of fun in Germany....and I keep going back to Europe - I've lost count..... dozens and dozens of times......

november_moon

Mine is not very exciting - October 2000, Japan - work trip. Two weeks with 14 of my closest colleagues, led by a manager who was deathly afraid that one of us was going to go missing.

I was 25, the only woman in the group, and at least 10 years younger than the next youngest person in our group. Total fish out of water. Our destination was the company factory, which was in the boonies - very difficult to go out and do anything without a car. We had to share cars with 2-3 other people and go everywhere together. I was grouped with 2 guys in their 50s who had NO interest in going anywhere except hotel-work-hotel - dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was terrible. Next day, repeat. BORING.

Longest 2 weeks of my life.

MilenaM

Leaving communist Romania, 9/21/1987, leaving for good. Only 15, alone on the flight, 2 pieces of allowed luggage and carrying a few diamond rings in my shoes. In those days gold was part of the state's patrimony and the airport did not have any metal detectors. I made it that day to 3 airports: Luxembourg, Shannon and the final destination, JFK. In Shannon I watched in shock as the toilet flushed itself and had an even bigger issue with making the water flow in the sink. I knew then that my new life was going to be exciting!