crossing borders

[cris]

"Hi, my name is Cris and the story that I'm going to tell is about a road trip that I took thirteen years ago. I was twenty-four, a couple of years out of college, in that point of time in one's life where you're making friends, meeting new people, forming the surrogate family that you've chosen. That summer, a few friends of mine and I decided

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[panzerkunst]

My path to and from Toronto then was interesting too, though I had nobody to witness it. "Oh come on! I am darkness too!!"

[cris]

omg, dude, I totally forgot about that guy.

I have a lot of awesome but vague memories from that trip, and sometimes wish that I had kept a journal back then just to have the reminders.

[panzerkunst]

Bridget had a big collection of quotes from that weekend, I dunno if it was posted here on LJ.

[_perihelion_]

the RCMP are the most polite cops anywhere. they can perform strip search while still leaving the searchie a modicum of dignity. or maybe that is just because they do it so often. ;)

[cris]

oh, and here I figured you were going to chime in about why you're persona non grata in my adopted homeland.

I will say in, all fairness, that I have gotten or heard about way more hassles from Canadian customs officers than American ones. US immigration officers, though, that's another story ;)

[ayun]

My favorite customs experience ever was in Berlin. A guy at the airport, near baggage claim, said to me "Do you have anything to smoke?" and mimed taking a drag off a cigarette. I shook my head, and he followed up with "Anything to drink?" and another mimed gesture. When I said no he wandered off. I seriously thought he was trying to bum a smoke or a swig from a duty-free bottle until I was outside of the airport and realized that he must have been my 'inspector.' There was also no passport control whatsoever.

[cris]

my other big customs memory was arriving in Italy on the tail end of a cross-European trip before the advent of the EU. We'd been on the road for, like, four weeks doing laundry in hotel rooms but not always being totally on top of things. At the checkpoint, an Italian customs inspector opened up a compartment in my duffel bag where I've been keeping my "to-be washed" pile of socks, underwear and shirts.

He looked at the pile with the air of a man resigned to his fate, reached into a desk and snapped on a pair of white latex gloves. Then he visibly held his breath and put his hands into the pile, doing a very abbreviated inspection, before pulling his hands away and saying, "ok, you can go."

"Dude, I'd feel bad for you, but you're the one being suspicious."

[iterum]

I expected some customs problems when I moved to France with two cats. Getting all the paperwork and the required microchips (two each, because of a vet's mistake the first time) had been an ordeal. At Logan, I had to accompany security to a back room for guards to pat down my pets to make sure they were "all cat" (and not partly cybernetic death machine, I guess).

At CDG, I stood nervously with the double-decker pet-carrier and a sheaf of paperwork, awaiting my turn.

A bored guard glanced down. "Those cats?" he said in lightly accented English.

I nodded, and he waved me through without further investigation.

[sogellag]

So glad you posted this... It is good to know what you were up to back then...