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A Happy Family Trip
We are six people in our family, me, my three brothers, and my parents. All of us have Austrian passports, except my oldest brother, Martin. Most countries, especially in Europe, have a separate queue for EU passports. We all go to the EU queue except my brother, we feel bad for him but he says its fine. My family all like to travel a lot, so we go all around the world. On every trip we go to, there is always some kind of problem with my brother and his Albanian passport. France has been the worst one till now. We go to France as a family trip and end up staying in the airport for 3 hours because they saw my brother's Albanian passport. My parents have tried for 3-4 years to get my brother an EU passport but never succeeded.
This one time me and my family were going to Greece, we were all excited to go. We went through the Albanian airport with no trouble. We got on the plane and arrived. As soon as we step foot in the airport in Athens, we saw the two queues: one for EU passports and one for all passports.
My brother said, “It’s fine you guys go to the EU queue I will wait here, it is better if you go wait for the luggage there. I’ve been through this queue many times, don’t worry.”
My mom and dad started arguing with him, telling him there is no way. We all knew that my parents did not want to wait in line they were just arguing to be kind and they knew Martin would not allow them to stay in the queue. My brother took his carry-on luggage and went in the queue. The rest of us went to the other queue and got out of in around 20 minutes. We waited for our luggage's to come for about 10 minutes. After our luggage came, we were wondering where Martin is, we had never assumed that the queue would last longer than 45 minutes.
We waited and waited until my mom said, “Okay that’s it I’m going to call him right now; I’m getting really worried.”
She called him, asking him where he was and what he was doing taking so long. He said that the queue was long, but there only about 5 people left in front of him. We waited for about 5 more minutes, and he finally came. We enjoyed the rest of our trip all together.
These instances are good because these ways we will always remember our trips, but it also disappoints me because we didn’t do anything wrong. I hadn’t realized it before this that it was happening very often in a lot of our trips. I'm lucky that my parents are calm people and don’t get mad. All of this racism happens because there are a lot of albanian mafia. Then foreigners think that everyone is mafia. I personally feel bad when this happens. I don’t want it to happen to anyone. I want me and my family to remember our trips by something funny not by something sad. When I look back to all these trips it makes me never want to go to these countries again. It doesn’t bother me to wait a few minutes or even hours longer it bothers me that they are being unfair.
Overall, my trips with my family are good. But it is always the little stuff that can ruin something. Instead of our vacations starting out good they start out bad. I hope this changes in the future so all people who are being discriminated can travel freely.
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I am from Albania, but I don't know what Albanians feel everytime they travel because I have an Austrian passport. I try to understand how my brother feels, and its hard.