Monk's Café with Erin

_MAL0663, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

Last night I had a couple of beers with exchange students and fellow Texan Erin Stanford. She goes to Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, just a few miles down the highway from my hometown Austin. We met at Monk's Café, a restaurant, bakery & bar located on the corner of Vasagatan and Wallingatan. They have a big selection of beers — well over 1,000 differenent varieties. It was fun to chat with someone from “back home” for a while.

Swedish passport due tomorrow

Tomorrow moring I shall return to the police station on Kungsholmen to pick up my new Swedish passport. Pursuant to the new regulations, passports must be picked up in person by the passport holder.

Aside from my aforementioned excitment about having tangiable proof of Swedish citizenship, I am also eager to see if the photo in my passport looks any better than the one on my Swedish drivers license. :)

I will use the new passport for the first time when I travel to the U.S. in a few weeks. I will go to Austin for an assigment for IBM.

Now that I have two citizenships, I'll have to investigate the proper procedures for travelling with two passports. I have several unanswered questions, including:

1. Am I allowed to leave Sweden using my Swedish passport, and enter the United States using my U.S. passport?
2. If so, must I use the U.S. passport to leave the U.S. again and use the Swedish passport to re-enter Sweden?

If I can use the passport of the country I'm enterering or leaving, it will mean standing in shorter queues.

It's actually a good thing that I am getting a new passport. My U.S. passport has no more places for entry & exit stamps. One of these days I need to swing by the U.S. embassy and have some more pages inserted into my U.S. passport.