Second honeymoon -- Europe 2014 -- It seemed like a good idea at the time :-(

Well, that did not go as planned.
We flew to Europe Monday evening, had a good flight. At passport control, we were not allowed into Europe because my husband's passport expires on September 20th, and, thanks to a law nobody mentioned, the EU now requires passports to be valid for at least three months after one's date of departure.

So, I had the option of entering and continuing our trip, but I would have had to do so alone -- not exactly how I would like to celebrate our twentieth anniversary.

Instead, the police escorted us to the Lufthansa desk, where we changed our tickets and were sent back home.

My husband, who spent months planning the trip and who always has wanted to take me on a vacation like this, is crushed. Should he have known about this law? I don't know; he travels a lot for work, and never had heard of it -- neither had anyone else I know. Apparently, we should not have been allowed to board our flight to Europe in the first place -- and had that happened, we at least would have been able to take immediate action to get a new passport or to go HOME instead of sitting on a bench in a tiny room under armed guard.

People are telling us to "salvage" our vacation by going to a B&B for three days or by going to a passport office today and getting an expedited passport, but I don't see that happening. There are only so many transatlantic flights I can handle in a week.

I asked the Ten Club folks to make my tickets available to someone else, but I don't know how they handle that sort of thing.

I hope the rest of you have a great, passport incident-free time.

It's called the Schengen agreement. And we (US) have something similar, apparently: people traveling to the US need to have passports valid for at least six months. Europe just began enforcing it recently, which probably is why my husband did not know about it.

We did not enter the lottery for the fall tour; between the kids' schedules and the Europe tour, we felt those four shows were enough.

I don't know if passport info is entered when purchasing the tickets -- my husband handled all of that (no, really, he travels a LOT). But your passport is scanned/swiped repeatedly from the time you arrive at the airport to depart until you pass through customs at your destination. We should have been stopped before boarding; we were told there will be a stiff fine for the people who let us leave in the first place. And had we been stopped here in the US, we could have rushed out and obtained an expedited passport for him, cutting things close for the Vienna show but allowing to have the rest of our vacation.

@MayDay10 -- lucky for you, I guess. Our tickets were booked a long time ago -- right after I had confirmation from 10Club, I think. The consulate told us the law has existed since 2006 but they only began to enforce it recently -- don't know how recently. And, seriously, my husband travels to Europe and Asia all the time -- monthly, at least. He was utterly blindsided by this.