Being in Northern Europe for the first 6 weeks, I thought it would be a smart idea to send a suitcase with summer clothes, books, projects and my teaching materials to my moms house in Germany instead of schlepping everything through 15+ countries. Brilliant idea! And I’ll pack my medicine in it, my shorts, textbooks and a few gifts for my mom of course. And I will have this suitcase shipped so it arrives right around the time when we will be here, beginning of July. Great $180 plan! Today, August 1st, it finally arrived after being stuck at customs for a month.

They have taken this suitcase apart and checked every inch of it very thoroughly. And they found illegal contents in the form of American prescription drugs in it (along with the actual prescription from my doctor)! Yes, several months worth of drugs. Little did I know that it is illegal to import drugs as a private person, so the extensive email exchange that was going on for the last month kept on getting more and more annoying. What a nuisance that was! But they finally granted me a exception and didn’t destroy or send back my suitcase because they believed me that all my teaching materials are very important to me and I need them asap! So they destroyed the drugs and send me the suitcase afterall. 😵‍💫 Bureaucracy at it’s finest!

So tomorrow at 9.30am I’m going to have a doctors visit to get all those prescriptions filled again. 😤😤😤

What I learned from this? Always have your drugs with you! Do not send them, take them with you!!!