After two years of no travelling, all of a sudden thousands and thousands of Swedes are trying to renew their passports all at the same time. This surge came as a complete surprise to the Swedish police, so the queues have been ridiculous.

I checked our passports in March for our travels this summer – four months in advance of the first trip, which I thought was plenty of time. Eric’s and Adrian’s needed renewing. The first available time for a renewal appointment was in May. In Östersund, 6 hours away from Stockholm by train. No chance of getting an appointment anywhere closer in reasonable time. People were literally writing bots to monitor the booking site for cancellations. Since the production time was supposed to be 5 to 6 weeks, that appointment in May was annoying but OK, so we went with that.

Then in early summer one of the two passport production machines in Finland broke down. Of course our passports didn’t get finished in the promised 5 to 6 weeks. Now we have less than one week to go before our trip to Estonia, and no passports.

Luckily temporary passports are a thing. They’re expensive, valid for a single trip, cannot be issued more than 72 hours in advance, and involve yet more queueing. So that’s what we spent this evening doing – arranging a temporary passport for Adrian at Arlanda airport. I’d been reading horror stories about the experience – people literally queueing overnight, or fainting in the queue due to the heat – so I was prepared for anything. Even not getting a passport at all and having to cancel the trip. But we had luck with the timing, and the queueing system has been greatly improved here, so we were in and out in half an hour, with a shiny pink passport in hand. It remains to be seen whether the real passports arrive in time for our next trip, or if we get to spend another evening queueing here.

I assumed that most of the police station would be off limits for photography but that an anonymous-looking institutional staircase would be OK.