Bad Planning: Learning from My Mistake!

Planning for my travel in June 2018 was simply NOT good enough, taking into account the passport I hold.

Submitted Schengen Visa Application with only a few days time in hand when I have always suggested others to keep at least a month in hand while applying for Schengen Visa or any similar visas.

Even though the French Embassy in Bangladesh processes most visa applications within 10 working days, there may be circumstances (even for those holding previous Schengen Visas as in my case) which can lead to delay. In my case, it was my plan of travelling to multiple countries not represented by Single embassy. The embassy wanted another 10 days to verify my travel plan and obtain approval from other embassies, while I had my flight to China leaving the next day for some urgent meeting. Had no option but to withdraw the passport. Thanks to the Consul for not marking "Rejected" on my application, instead he stamped "Application Withdrawn" with the remark "change in tour plan".

The sad part is, I had already purchased my air ticket to Berlin, Germany and all other air tickets within Europe. I had also paid for hotels, a Euroline Pass, travel insurance and other things necessary for a trip to Europe. Altogether it was a loss of more than USD 700 (all my air tickets were promo tickets, so it was really cheap). Had everything gone as per the original plan, it could have been a good 17 days trip to 5 countries in Europe.

Whatever it is, I take it as a lesson, which is needed to accomplish my goal to travel All Countries holding a Bangladeshi Passport. Since then I have been able to successfully travel for almost 13 months in a span of 2 years, not taking into account small changes in plans and so on. But none of my tours was completely shattered due to circumstances as explained above. Obviously due to the outbreak of Covid-19 Outbreak, I am not being able execute the current travel plan from April to July 2020 for around 100 days, but that’s something I cannot do anything about.

#travelplanning

#travelmistakes

#visa

#

guywiththegreenpassport