Visa. Or: How to be free

With a piece of several papers, glued together, attached with a grimmy or much too old photo, we
pass boarders that we, the people living on this earth, have invented several decades ago. The so
called „passport“ defines not only where we're coming from, but it also determines where we can go
to. And that's not measured by who we are and how much we want to travel, give, support, learn,
share or what we have done so far, but it is measured by a countries relations with another one. That
I am born in a western country makes it easy to access other countries, to step over the imaginary
line that we have printed on paper to devide one people from another. But what does it mean in
another country, let's say Serbia, Turkey, Iran or le maroq?
My host in eastern Turkey, a fine young doctor, decided to go to Italy to join some friends on a
week-trip to Florence. After handing in her visa details, weeks and weeks passed. She had to go
again and again to the embassy, had to show that she had already booked the flight there with return
as well as a hotelreservation (although she didn't know if she would get the visa!) and had to answer
questions about her purpose of stay, etc. But what were the visa details she had to hand in? It wasn't
only her passport and a fill-in about her planned stay, no, she had to lay open her bank-account
details (which an average German or American simply would refuse cause it's private), bring
references from her boss at work as well as from the owner of the flat she's renting (just imagine
your boss wrting a reference that you can go out of the country for a week!), etc, etc...
I talked to people a lot about the visa issue. Put aside my own feelings of guilt and the wish I could
just copy my own passport or give the same rights I have just because I was born on another piece
of land on this earth...there was so much resentment, helplessness and the lack of any idea how to
change this as it is just „big man's politics“, who's the „bad“ guy and who's the „good“, that I
wished there was ANY way to change this...
My host is still waiting for her visa to be issued, while her vacation gets closer and might pass until
some burocrat might decide that she will be able to see Florence for a week while I am travelling in
other countries without applying for visas at all.