well i’m on my way…

I had no idea we were in France when the border patrol gates loomed up at us, the only blinding light for ages.  We single-file shuffled out  of the bus wiping the sleep out of our eyes.  Ryan hissed at me from a few seats back, “What do I do?” referring to the sample of pot he still had on him.  I wanted nothing to do with it, so I shrugged my shoulders and stepped into the cool air.  Followed the rest of the Eurolines passengers to the flourescently-lit building.  There were six desks, most of the people sitting behind them as wide as the furniture they were resting their elbows on.

I filled out the white card: Name, Nationality, DOB, Place of Birth, Signature; those are the easy ones.  There was a line for address, and that is something I didn’t have.  (We were staying with a guy we met in Krakow; he offered us his house after only knowing him about an hour.  We were supposed to meet him at a tube station, only had his email address, and the directions to the station were in my bag on the bus.)  The last time I came to London, I didn’t write an address, though I had it, and got a lot of crap for it.  And since then I’ve always made sure I had one.  Until now, of course.

The woman kept repeating “I can’t let you in, what if something happens to you and we can’t find you…”  Please.  They do not collect address info for ‘in case of emergency’.  If anyone looks at it beyond border control I’m guessing no.  It’s probably something devised to make people squirm at border control.  Kind of like taking shoes off in airports in the States.  You don’t have to do that anywhere else…I bet there’s some guy sitting in front of camera screens laughing his ass off watching people dance around trying to take their shoes off…OK off topic, I’m sorry.

After giving me a tongue thrashing about my ‘no address’ information, she asked where I was going after my 12 days in England.  “Morocco for two weeks, back to London, then Ireland, then home.”  She seemed satisfied when I told her I have all these flights booked but thank god she didn’t ask for proof.  I have it all except for the flight home and that’s the most important one.  Oops.

She finally thumbed through my passport and asked me when I arrived in Europe.  Clearly she couldn’t make any sense of my nearly fully stamped pages.  She stamped one of the last pages, told me that next time I’ll need an address (right-that’s what they said last time), and passed me through the line out the door back to my bus.

I didn’t notice Ryan behind me, and I didn’t see his head in the window when I got to the bus.  My rattled nerves from the border crossing just intensified (I hate border crossings!) What if they found his pot?  What if they’re keeping him here?  Do I stay here, or continue on to London?  I told myself not to be silly and when he got on the bus he told me he’d binned it. Why bring it all this way then?  Oh well, whatever.  Not my problem.

The bus drove onto the ferry where we had to exit the bus.  So much for taking the night bus in order to get some sleep!  We were due to arrive in Dover…

I fell asleep once we arrived on dry land and I saw that we were driving on the left side of the road, which made me smile.  I passed out for a good couple hours until I heard the bus driver talking in my sleep “That’s Big Ben”  I opened my eyes to see a tannish looking clocktower and an ornate squarish building next to it.  I closed my eyes in hopes to get a few more minutes of sleep…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 2:52 am and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.