Word: consulate
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...tourists in distress find an occasional U.S. consul coldly impervious to their problems, earlier travelers are probably to blame. Years ago, when I was a fledgling vice consul in Montevideo, Uruguay, I met and deeply sympathized with an upstanding young couple, innocent victims of unforeseen disaster. No official funds being on hand, I made them a personal loan of what amounted to two weeks' salary, never doubting that it would be repaid...
...American lady vacationing in Italy seeks advice at the American consulate in Florence. She gets a crisp brush-off from a pompous young vice consul. "I pay your salary, young man," she protests, but in vain. That scene in Olivia de Havilland's 1962 movie, Light in the Piazza, often evokes a knowing chuckle from seasoned American travelers. U.S. consuls have a reputation-sometimes deserved, frequently not-of being coldly impervious to fellow citizens in distress. Now that the expanding but unreliable charter-flight business is leaving a growing number of travelers high and dry (TIME, Sept...
...other hand, when 80 travelers were stranded in Moscow last week by an overbooked regular flight on Aeroflot, the twelve Americans involved had a very different experience. The U.S. and British consuls painstakingly negotiated with Aeroflot to fly the strandees out the next evening-although not before the travelers, who had no transit visas, spent several hours locked up in their hotel. When the U.S. consul went to convey the good news, he was besieged by angry Japanese who claimed that they were ignored by their consul. "A novel experience for an American consul," he commented...
...While a consul's primary role is to assist Americans abroad, there are a great many misconceptions about his powers. If the State Department gives prior approval, a consul can aid a strandee by making a repatriation loan for the price of a return ticket, plus a small subsistence allowance-both on condition that the strandee surrender his passport. The State Department then holds the passport until the loan is repaid. In practice, only the mentally ill, the seriously injured, the infirm, the aged and "those with a hardship story good enough to make strong men weep," to quote...
...occasion, the French ambassador and his wife chanced upon seven soldiers with an army truck looting the home of the French consul, and were roughed up by the looters. The following morning the Foreign Ministry made apologies and returned the consul's belongings. Burglaries have also occurred at homes of Italian, Canadian, Polish and Bulgarian diplomats. One exception of the caballeros de la noche: the Russian embassy, which also happens to be the most heavily guarded...