I’m not sure if you realized this yet but the world is currently getting a bit darker and considerably sadder then it was before.

Here’s the story: Today I strolled into a Berlin town hall to apply for one of those shiny new passports when this was abruptly put to my attention. I handed over my passport photos and the almost friendly woman behind the counter told me that they couldn’t use them for a passport. The main reason for that was the fact that on this photo you can probably spot a slight expression of polite happiness on my face. Instead of just assigning me to one of their service desks she send me to a photo booth to make new ones.

The result you can see below: While the first on says things like: ‘Hey, I’m a bit too shy to smile. But you may laugh at my ridiculous expression. And at least it’s summer, the sun is shining and I feel happy from the bottom of my heart!’, the other one looks just sad, hopeless and as if I had lost my soul on the way to the photo booth.

Note that my hair doesn’t fit on the second picture. This is in fact also against the regulations. But guess what? I didn’t even consider cutting my hair for this.

Suddenly again this 1984 Apple ad came to my mind and I was thinking I really look like those soulless guys marching. But of course I felt being like the cool (and multi-colored) rebellious woman with the sledge hammer. Hell Yeah!

Me myself not being very happy with this development, there’s a certain group of people that have my utmost sympathy on this: the passport inspectors of the world!

At least they are the ones who have to look at pictures of the undead for the rest of their doomed lives. And I guess their chronic depression will spread all over the globe in the course of say, a year! Wow. That’s a dark and straightforwardly pathetic vision…

Anyway, here comes my alternative suggestion on how to make the world a happier place to travel:

As all this biometric data is stored on a digital chip anyway let’s just put another picture in the passport to look at! I imagine it could be anything. Not even necessarily a portrait of the holder but maybe something that expresses his/her character or mood. Why not even let it include a message to anyone checking it like: ‘Hello! I’m so excited about visiting your country and I’m looking forward to learning more about your culture and language within the next two weeks.’ That would make the entry a convenient and happy event, I guess.

The next step then could be letting people customize the designs of their passports, but let’s not carry this to excess and solve the world depression thing first.

Have a nice day everybody!