HOW MY PASSPORT HELPED ME JOIN THE CIRCUS

In this video I'm going to audition for Cirque du Soleil in London. I'm also going to explain how pilots and flight attendants travel overseas all month long and never fill up their passports. You ready? Let's go. My name is Paul. I fly airplanes for a living, but my passion is encouraging you to explore this beautiful world by giving you a glimpse into my layover life. Your passport. It's kind of like a book that you wrote, except there's no words in it. But one stamp can lead to an entire evening full of storytelling. And whether you have one stamp or a lot of stamps, each one involved money and time. But how does someone like me, who travels internationally three or four times a month, not run out of space in his memory book? That's what I'm going to explain today. But first, we're in London and we're going to go make some memories. Believe it or not, in a couple minutes I'm meeting up with a few flight attendants. We're joining the circus. Sort of. This all started with a text from my friend Sarah, who asked if I wanted to take a trapeze class on our layover. Hi, are you Genevieve? I'm Sarah. Hi. Obviously, I said yes. Our instructor Genevieve had us start with some warm-ups. And as our abs started to burn, I looked around the room and couldn't help but think that nothing in here looked that challenging. I mean, it's not like we're going to be walking a tightrope. How hard could it be? I was wrong. First, we learned how to simply get up on the bar. But as you're about to see, this would prove to be one of the most challenging moves of the day. Eventually, Genevieve was tired of watching me flail around and gave me a hand. You can't see her in this shot, but she literally lifted my foot with her hand. It still wasn't very pretty. Once we managed to get up on the bar, it was time to get down and learn our first move. Some people, like the girl in white, were more graceful at this than others. When Genevieve, who performed in Cirque du Soleil in Montreal, showed us the first move, I seriously didn't think I could do it. My hands were already sore and I didn't think I could do it. I was relieved it involved getting back onto the bar. But with a little help and some faith in the rope, before I knew it, I was performing my first trapeze trick. Getting back up made me understand why we did all the ab exercises at the beginning of class. Time for our second move. I was relieved that it didn't involve getting back onto the bar, but this one put some serious strain on my feet. Again, Genevieve showed us the move, then we tried it for ourselves. I kind of like this one, but I can't imagine doing it 100 feet in the air because, well... Time for the last move. And for the first time in the class, I got onto the bar all by myself. Sounds simple, but as Genevieve so politely put it, I am not very slight. And I'm going to blame that unslightness for me completely missing the move. I don't think I impressed Genevieve, nor will I be joining the circus anytime soon, but it was a fun way to work out and challenge myself by doing something way outside of my comfort zone. We left the studio and found a park overlooking the city where we could debrief our adventure and laugh at ourselves. Sitting there looking out at one of the coolest cities in the world made me thankful for this job and the friends I've met along the way who are willing to push themselves outside their comfort zone while encouraging me to do the same. Man, yesterday was way harder than I thought it was going to be. I didn't really know what we were getting into. My whole body is sore. Just muscles I've never used before, and super fun. So, to answer the question I proposed earlier, how do pilots and flight attendants travel around the world without ever getting their passports filled up? It's pretty simple. Most of the countries we go to don't stamp our passports. In London, for example, when we arrive, we pull up on a bus, someone gets out of the bus, walks into the customs office, and there's nobody in there. Or maybe there is, I've never seen anyone in there. And there's like a little mailbox. We drop off the GENDEC, which stands for General Declaration, and it's got a list of all the crew names on it. And we literally just drop it in a mailbox, and then we leave the airport property. In Portugal, you go through customs, they scan your passport, and then they just give you your passport back. They don't stamp your passport, unless you ask for it. Some people, it's their first time in a new country, some people want their passport stamped, and they're usually happy to do that. In Italy, you literally just walk through, show them your airline ID, not your passport, your airline ID, and you're through customs. In Germany, it's a little bit different. Let me show you here. Germany has a thing, apparently they have to stamp your passport. So they give you, so your passport doesn't fill up, especially if you go to Germany all the time, they give you a piece of paper like this. I haven't been to Germany much lately. And then they just stamp your piece of paper, it's got your name on it. So you use this. I keep this with my passport. So you just use that when you go through customs in Germany. And when you come back into the United States, most people have global entry. So you look at the camera, you probably know how global entry works, but you look at the camera, takes a picture of you, identifies who you are, which is like crazy, prints out your thing, don't even pull your passport out of your bag, at least usually, and hand it to the customs guy, and you're off. If a crew member doesn't have global entry, they go through the crew line, there's like a crew line at customs, and they just scan your passport. I think they may take your picture. It's been a long time since I've gone through the crew line, and then you're on your way. So that's kind of how it works. I'm curious, what is your favorite passport stamp in your passport? Drop it in the comments below, and I'd like to hear what your favorite passport stamp is. Where do you think I'm going on my next labor? I'm hoping it's not London again. I've been doing this kind of all summer. But hit the subscribe button, and maybe you can join me. We'll see you then. That's it. You're good. Tall? Weak. Weak? You're doing great. It's way harder than it looked. That's what she said. I thought this was a family channel. Yeah, that'll get cut out. That'll go in the bloopers. Hopefully, we'll see you back. Yeah. Hey, tell them to YouTube. It's called My Layover Life. My Layover Life. You'll be on it. I need to. You'll be on it. A couple weeks, it'll come out. Cool. Have a good, safe flight. Yeah, thank you. And enjoy the rest of your time. Yeah, thank you very much. See you later. Bye. That was awesome. That was so hard. I'm like drenched. Thank you. I know, me too. I'm going to freeze up there because that was so good.