Opening Moves

If you ask anybody who has known me long enough, they’ll tell you that I am a virtuoso of the boneheaded play in the endzone. If you’ve seen Super Bowl XXVIII, the second match between Buffalo and Dallas, you no doubt recall the Buffalo receiver in the first half who was within yards of the endzone and began a taunting run with the ball behind him – which got stripped. That play changed the momentum of the entire game. In fact, you could say that I am like the Buffalo Bills of the early 90s – four consecutive Super Bowl appearances, no wins.

How this relates to this article will be clear in just a moment. You see, while I don’t often take PR trips, and never for a single game, this time was special. Activision had set up an event that took place in Poland, my home country, a place I hadn’t seen in 5 years. How could I resist? The details of the official trip I’ll save for later, except to say that it was an absolute blast and took place in the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen.

Central Station, Warsaw

Notice how slim everyone is

Parking lot outside the train station downtown

What’s important is my trip “back” to Canada. You see, it didn’t happen. Normally, when I travel, it’s exclusively between the US and Canada. A certificate of citizenship and driver’s license or other government photo ID will suffice. Now, this won’t work when flying directly from Poland to Canada, but I did have a Polish passport – after all, I still am a citizen of the country and did get one to get in. Activision had been so nice as to repeatedly, multiple times, at every occasion, warn that I needed a passport. So I had one. Just not the one for the trip back. Apparently, if I wanted to – as a proven citizen of Canada – return to Canada through the US, I needed a Canadian passport. Not, mind you, to satisfy Canadian authorities (because since I’d be coming through the US, I could just say I was in the States and fly in on my regular ID), but to make the Americans happy.

The major landmark in WarSaw

A mix of very old and very new

The sun setting on a long, long day for Jakub

Oh, and when I found this out, I’d had about 8 hours of sleep in the last 72, including 2 very, very drunken hours the night before – and naturally was so hung-over that I didn’t know if I was shaking from the hangover or from being denied entry on the airplane. Well, technically, I was allowed on the airplane but the paper-pushers at the airport said I’d be in for a jolly old time with American Customs if I made it. Days, weeks perhaps, held in limbo. Supposedly, there’s an ancient Chinese curse that goes “may you live in interesting times”; it was shaping up to be an interesting day at the least. Here I was – tired, hung-over, jet-lagged, and stuck in Poland. Friday the second was starting to feel like Friday the thirteenth.