Portuguese Consul Passport
Usually, I would not collect such a document, as it is “too young” for my collection focus. But then I took a closer look into the pages of this well-traveled document and found most exciting visas, especially from the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and those are well within my focus. The Service Passport was issued 5 June 1975 and several times extended until December 1979.

By Car from Portugal to Poland

The first visa is a Polish visa issued at their embassy in Lisboa on 16 June 1975. Bello Sucena de Matos, so the name of the vice consul, seems to have traveled by train from Lisboa to Paris on 17 June 1975. The next three stamps are from the GDR railway stations Marienborn, Frankfurt/Oder and Berlin/East (Friedrichstrasse), all from 21 June 1975.

Then a Polish visa entering Poland from 26 June 1975. Did he travel to his post by train? The whole trip took him obviously seven days. Maybe he had a stop in Spain or France? But I can’t see any visas.

Most interesting for me are of course the GDR visas, as you don’t find often old passports with GDR visas issued outside from the German Democratic Republic. Usually, only officials were able to obtain such a visa outside of East Germany. The first Service visa can be seen on page fifteen of his passport, issued on December 15, 1975.

There are a total of four GDR Service visas and plenty of GDR checkpoint stamps traveling on train and car. Other visas are Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Denmark.

The Vice-Consul traveled with his wife and two sons, I have her service passport as well. His wife Yolanda also traveled to South Africa and Bulgaria according to the visas in her document. Finally, her passport has some extension pages with GDR stamps and Polish visas.

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