This is the story about the time I got a passport to the country that doesn't really exist.
Let's begin.
Inside precious little Lithuania is a precious little republic called Uzupis. ( We like to call it Uz.) It is a tiny little republic that declared itself independent in 1997. Though it isn't big enough to be it's own country, Uzupis has it's own fun personality and even has it's own president. On the side of one of the main streets is it's constitution which includes laws like:
"A dog has the right to be a dog."
"People have the right to have no rights."
"People have the right to be unhappy."
"Everyone has the right to be idle."
and my personal favorite,
"Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat."
This place is just full of silly things and oozes charm. We have gone there a few times and we had heard that some of the previous girls had gotten their passports stamped. We did some online research, and the google practically made it sound impossible to get your passport stamped in this place. All of us girls are pretty much obsessed with passport stamps, so we decided we would do whatever it took to find our stamp.
We started with locating the post office. We read online that there is only one man in Uzupis who can issue the stamps. We heard that he just wanders around and you have to hunt him down to get a stamp. We also heard he likes to hang out at the post office. That seemed like a much more plausible thing to search for than some elusive man, so we rode a bus right into Uz and started our search.
After trekking up a big hill, we finally got to the post office. We showed the woman at the desk our passports and asked for a stamp. She just shook our head. Dang. We weren't at the right place. Luckily the woman was kind and she gave us an address to find. We said our thanks and went on our way. The next destination was Uzipio 2. That is where the stamping man illegibly is and you bet your bottom dollar we were going to find him.
We walked all the way back down the hill and there was still no sign of Uzipio 2. We were really confused. Finally Jessica spotted a 2 on the side of a restaurant. We were even more confused. The girls had just about given up and were starting to walk away while Paige and I went inside. We asked the bartender if he knew where we could get a stamp. He slowly reached down, opened up a drawer, and pulled out a stamp. Paige and I just about died. We were so excited. We yelled out to the other girls to come inside and we got the infamous Uzupis passport stamp.
Here she is in all of her glory.
Major score. Thanks Uzupis.
XO Mikele
P.S. If you want to find the secret passport stamping location, just walk over the lock bridge and go into the restaurant on the left hand side. The internet says you can only get stamps on April fools day. So don't listen to the internet kids. Listen to your homegurl Mikele and your Uzupis dreams will come true.
