Border monkey

I don't normally respond to these, but I've crossed a few borders in my time, so I'll share, even though my stories are pretty tame:

• Taking the train from Finland into the Soviet Union in 1987 as part of an AFS trip a fried of mine had the pleasure of a strip search. We weren't ever really sure why he was chosen, but discussion later revealed that three of the guys had their cavities checked and all of them were wearing sweatpants. The phrase they all agreed on was "firm hands." Of course, being relatively innocent high school students, no one was carrying anything. On the way back we were all carrying some form of "contraband" (flags, rubles, etc. but nothing really juicy), but there was little, if any search on the return trip. Oh, and they told us not to take any pictures of bridges as we crossed the border, so of course all of us now have blurry snapshots of bridges we can't identify. Such rebels.
• The most scrutiny I've ever had was going into Sweden via what had not long before been East Germany. I was by myself in the train car, and the border guard was visibly suspicious of a solo American entering Sweden via "East-- former East Germany" as she said a couple of times. She didn't do anything other than give me the eye for a minute or two, but that was the first and only time I've been viewed with quite that much suspicion. Of course, what she didn't know was that by the time I left there had been a whole string of people who expressed surprise at my wanting to go through "East-- former East Germany," so by that time I was pretty amused by the whole thing.

Posted by Jason at November 30, 2004 02:53 PM