A Visa Misadventure: That Time I Was Stranded in London

It’s been almost two full years since I left the US and as a result, I’ve been reminiscing about the times I had that privilege in the past. My Mom and I have had some awful travel luck so some of those memories are less than ideal, but I could usually grab a nugget of wisdom from them in retrospect 🙂 .

So I’m here today to talk about that time I was stranded in London with basically no money while studying abroad in Italy. Let’s dive into the brain of college junior Purple:

I’m trying to hide my tears while riding the tube through London – I am not succeeding. My mind is whirring and my luggage is tucked protectively between my legs while passengers head to lunch trying not to stare (or at least that’s how it feels).

I had little money to my name, no ability to text on my Italian flip phone and nowhere to sleep until my plane back to Italy leaves in a week. How did I get here?

It started when I decided I wanted to go to Italy to study abroad. The program I wanted was totally immersive: you go to an Italian university, have Italian roommates and live in a town where residents don’t often speak English. It’s do or die 🙂 !

To get into this program, I had to take an Italian class that met every weekday for two years. The class was at 8am and I am NOT a morning person, but I suffered through, completed the necessary courses, applied to the program, crossed my fingers and surprisingly, I GOT IN!

I was so excited! It seemed like my life was aligning with my only future goal at the time: move to Europe after graduating. This was going to be a major stepping stone to that goal. I was ready to dip my toe into what I had decided was my future life. So I packed my bags and boarded a flight with my Mom that was in literally the last row of coach (sadly this is way before I discovered travel hacking...).

We landed, I tried to get my bearings while only speaking Italian and soon my Mom had to return home and I was left alone across the Atlantic. Then something unexpected happened. I started feeling homesick for the first time I could recall. I had gone to far away locations within the US by myself since I was about 15, I had gone to sleepaway camps for weeks or months at a time, but I had never felt like this before. I missed home.

While I was battling these feelings, a college friend who was studying abroad in Beijing, China asked if I wanted to visit her. At this point, I hadn’t seen anyone familiar in months and had a constant headache from only speaking, reading and (at times) dreaming in a new language. I jumped at the chance to be with someone familiar.

So I looked at my checking account: $1,000. I decided that I would spend $700 of that on a flight to see her. However, the only way to get a roundtrip flight for that relatively cheap price was to fly there from London. So I found a cheap flight from Italy to the UK and was set!

Before buying my ticket, my friend suggested that I make sure I didn’t need a visa to go to China. This was before I knew about this amazing Wikipedia entry that has visa info for every country in the world for US citizens (or maybe it didn’t exist yet). Similar pages exist for other world citizens as well so feel free to check them out if that applies to you. This page has saved my butt several times…though sadly this is not one of those times…

At the advice of my friend, I went to China’s visa website and discovered…it was in Mandarin 🙂 . Understandable, but that didn’t help me at the time (and this was pre-Google translate popping up in Chrome to help). So I checked out the US government visa website and it said that there was no visa required to visit China. Relieved, I packed my bags and headed out a few days later.

I took the bus to the airport, flew to London and then had one night to kill before my flight to China (I like to have a buffer before international transfers in case anything happens). Luckily, another friend of mine was studying abroad in London and asked if I wanted to stay with her. And, hilariously she was flying to Shanghai the next morning.

I thought this was the perfect situation and was very grateful my friend let me stay with her. Then the next day arrived and we headed our separate ways. My flight was in the morning and my friend’s was that afternoon. She walked me to the tube station, hugged me and I was off!

I sat on the tube excited for the adventure I was about to embark on. At this point, I had never been to Asia and was already feeling less homesick just from the few hours I had spent with my familiar London friend. But then, I arrived at Heathrow airport. I went up to the ticket counter to check in and was surprised when they directed me to someone else, a stern looking man. He told me bluntly that I couldn’t check in.

I asked why. He said because I did not have a visa they could find in their system. I explained how I had checked the US government visa site and it said I didn’t need one. He replied that I should always check with the country I’m visiting (me explaining that that site was in Mandarin didn’t help my case…).

He said that if I really wanted to, I could board the flight, but that the Chinese government would just send me back immediately after touchdown. I conceded and walked away to try and figure out what the fuck to do now.

I assessed the situation. I was in an airport in a country where the only person I knew was flying to the other side of the globe in a few hours, my flip phone didn’t have data (the olden days), and I was out of text credits (which likely wouldn’t have worked outside of Italy anyway). I had no way to contact the friend I had stayed with the night before and even if I did, she was leaving in a few hours. I had less than $300 to my name, definitely not enough to get a hotel room for a week until my flight back to Italy.

So I got back on the tube and tried to keep my tears of frustration from falling. I used the hour-long tube ride to try and think of a plan. I decided to go back to the friend’s apartment as a first step. Luckily, I was paying attention when she took me to the tube and I remembered the stop (never take Google Maps for granted kids 😉 ). I got off and then stood outside her apartment complex and hoped that someone would come by.

A while later a woman approached to get into her apartment building and I asked her if she knew my friend – shockingly she did (it was a huge apartment complex). She even had her number! She called my friend and she was luckily around and came to get me. I explained what happened and she took me back to her apartment so we could figure out what to do.

I used her computer and realized that I did know one other person in London: my college roommate! I reached out to her over social media and waited to hear back as my friend and I tried to figure out if I could get my money back from the flight. In the end we couldn’t, but right before my friend had to leave for her flight, my roommate did respond and shockingly said I could stay with her for the week until my flight to Italy. PHEW!

My friend left for her flight and I headed to my roommate’s flat. When I arrived, I was even more in awe that she offered me a place to stay because her room was tiny: it was a twin bed with just enough extra space for me to sleep on the floor and that’s it.

Luckily the space didn’t bother us and we spent the week sightseeing and studying for our upcoming exams. I am forever grateful to that friend for helping me out like that even though I very much doubt sharing such a small space with someone else was her idea of a great time 🙂 .

Looking back at this situation now, I realize that I could have asked my Mom to help me monetarily once my remaining $300 was depleted with a night or two in a hotel, but at the time, it honestly didn’t even occur to me. I had no way to contact her and even if I could, I didn’t know how to get money from the US. I also didn’t realize I could have used that money to get a flight back to Italy if there was any left over after a night in a hotel or hotel alternative (I hadn’t considered hostels either…).

I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to properly realize that the situation was not as dire as it could have been, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. In Heathrow I felt alone and out of options. Though, on the bright side, these days I don’t take international data plans or easy money transfer apps for granted 🙂 .

Anyway, by the end of my unexpected week in London, I had come to a surprising conclusion: I didn’t want to move to Europe after graduation. The time away made me realize that my priorities were not what I originally thought. While I do love adventure and exploration, I valued time with the people I love more.

This strange series of events helped me realize that my life didn’t have to be one or the other: the familiar or the unfamiliar. It could combine both. I didn’t need to let go of everything and everyone I knew to experience the world and learn new things. A balance could be struck 🙂 .

So I changed my future plans to revolve around spending time with my Mom and my friends instead of moving an ocean away without anyone. This entire London/Beijing debacle paired with my surprising homesickness helped me realize what was most important to me – and maybe that’s why this song from the ridiculous comedy Eurovision: The Story Of Fire Saga makes me tear up. The lyrics are on point:

“All I needed was to get away
just to realize that I was meant to stay.

Thought I made it clear, do I have to say it?
It was always there, we just didn’t see it.
All I need is you and me and my home.”

Anyway, besides wanting to encourage y’all to reflect on what you actually want, this is a giant reminder to check your visas. Even if it involves learning Mandarin 🙂 . Just kidding – luckily it’s 2021 instead of 2009 and it’s way easier to both translate websites and know what visa requirements are (based on my recent perusal of the US embassy website). Still, always check your visas y’all!

Have you ever had a visa mishap? How did you solve it?