stut

Most of us cross borders pretty regularly. But much of these are of the rather tedious, queue-in-an-airport type.

I have long had a fascination with land borders (or short water crossings). Many of these are almost invisible now in Europe, thanks to the Schengen Agreement, and crossing them can become mundane, but plenty remain that are interesting, tense, even spectacular.

What are your experiences crossing borders? Any tales to tell? Any particularly odd means of crossing, strange occurrences, nail-biting moments?

(I find the whole experience interesting. How do the countries vary each side of the border? How does the crossing reflect their relationship?)

KelseyR

Driving back from Windsor to Detroit as US citizens last year caused my friend and I to be "randomly selected" for special screening. The CBP agent found it highly suspicious that 2 women with the same first name would fly from their separate cities (LAS & SAT) to go to a concert at Caesars Windsor. Took a full car search and separate interviews with past addresses and job info (and calls to our employers to verify) to be released a couple hours later.

Christopher

I remember once being on a train between Switzerland and Italy, not so long ago but before Switzerland was a part of the Schengen area. Somewhere near the border an Italian passport officer popped into the carriage, looked at the passports of the two people nearest the door (who were, I presume, British), called out to the assembled passengers, "Is everyone in this carriage British? OK then," and then merrily waved and went back out through the door.

There were several people in the carriage who were almost certainly not British, and in any case this seemed to me to be a lamentably poor attempt at checking passports... Really not worth doing at all!

Crossing by land from Zimbabwe into Botswana last year threw into strong relief some of the differences between the two countries: the immigration hall in Zimbabwe was hot, fly-blown, and badly in need of repairs and re-decoration, and the the system was antiquated, uncomputerised, slow and inefficient. By contrast, the hall on the Botswanan side was in good repair, and the system was modern and (seemed to be) efficient.

bwiadca

Back in the 80s I would go with my family on summer vacations from Poland to Czechoslovakia. Drive from my city to the border was 1hr. Queue at the border about 8 hours. Then 30 minutes driving distance past the border to our destination.
On average you had to spend ~8-10 hours to leave Poland. On the way back to Poland was little bit faster. Only about 6 hours to cross the border.
Today I can do the same trip in 45 minutes. Roads are much better, and no more passport control.

cfwolfs

I live in Detroit and go to Windsor occasionally. I also have global entry. The last three times I've come back from Windsor on the tunnel I've had to answer questions for 3-4 minutes and open all my windows. I've attempted to use my GE card at the readers for nexus and it's failed each time. (The GE interviewer indicated it should work.) The last time I came back on the bridge, I had a full car search that took 45 minutes.

I've also been asked why I have global entry. (I want to say, "So I can avoid situations like this at the airport that waste my time."). I don't travel that often, but it was worth it. I don't understand how I can travel 4000 miles away and have minimal interaction with a human to come back, but I go to the casino for two hours and I am given the third degree.

Christopher

It seems bizarre. But I think lots of countries are more wary of people crossing land borders, especially in a car (rather than by train, for example) than they are of air travellers. I can only think that this is because people travelling by air are screened, as is their luggage, before departure, whereas people driving across a border can have anything in their car. But it does seem odd, yes, and it isn't entirely logical.

stut

Heh, I've had a few like that. That old hardback, black passport used to open a surprising amount of doors.

My most memorable border crossing was Pakistan to India at Wagah (the only open border) ca 1999 (after the nuclear tests, but before Musharraf).

It was fair to say that the two countries don't love each other. Annoyingly, we'd been delayed leaving Lahore, and got to the border not long before closing, on the last day of our visas' validity (a schoolboy error). We entered the customs area, to find two other westerners ahead of us having their suitcases gone over in forensic detail - dirty underwear and all.

It was made clear to us that we were in for the same treatment, which naturally would take us past the border closure and hence validity of our visas. Oh, unless, what's this, a money belt?

As it turned out, the money belt had a sum total of US$7 cash in it. I'm really not proud of this, but had little choice at the time, and that $7 stayed in Pakistan.

However, the border agent started to get nervous, and said we had to go individually over the border to the Indian side, through an oddly quiet no-mans-land. I left first, and, luckily, managed to check the passport he gave me back just before I reached India. It wasn't mine. I ran back, much to the border guard's anger, and pointed out his error. He was in a near panic now. I left, quickly, with my actual passport, my travelling companion following a few minutes later. We made it into India.

Somehow, porters managed to make it into the no-mans-land and tried to persuade visitors that the distance was several kilometres, and that you couldn't possibly carry your stuff over there. As you arrived in India, several men shoved bottles of beer at you, and were shortly followed by the various taxi-wallahs (actually got quite a good deal out of one of them, for a long trip).

Sighs of relief were breathed. We then got to watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ0ue-XGl9c

As an epilogue, I posted this experience on a travel forum (Lonely Planet, IIRC) after coming back. It got published in some form, and then later read by someone involved with the Pakistan government. I later found it quoted in a document citing reasons for a clampdown on corruption on the border. I haven't attempted to cross it since...

Aviatrix

I could tell lots of stories about European border crossings pre-Schengen... including several trips across the Iron Curtain. But seeing other people have mentioned Detroit-Windsor I thought I'd start with a couple of US-Canada stories...:

I've done Detroit-Windsor-Detroit only once. Crossing into Canada, on a hotel shuttle, was painless - a few routine questions (I was the only foreigner on board) and I was on my way. Returning to Detroit (for my flight home from DTW) I had arranged to have lunch with a friend, and she had agreed to meet me off my train in Windsor, so I crossed the border in her car... which seemed to make us both suspicious in the eyes of the US Immigration Officer on the bridge! "How come you two know each other? Who introduced you?" Loads and loads of questions, all in quite an aggressive tone. I felt embarrassed - as I was causing my friend so much trouble in re-entering her own country. She felt quite embarrassed - because it was her country that was being so unwelcoming.

By contrast... wind back to my first-ever visit to the USA, back in the good old 1990s. We were staying in Canda for a couple of weeks, and had gone on a day trip to Upper Canda Village from our base in Ottawa... but found much of it closed (this was in April). With nothing else planned for the rest of the day we decided to cross the St Lawrence into the USA... just to say we'd been! (I'd never been before, my husband had been once, as a teenager).

Stopping at the US border checkpoint (just outside a sleepy little place called Cornwall) it didn't take us long to realise that the agent was somewhat out of his depth... it seemed he had never seen foreign passports before. He asked us a few questions - politely, almost hesitantly - then handed the passports back to us and wished us a nice day. No stamp, no I94 - just "have a nice day".

It was only when we drove back into Canada some hours later that we found out that something was amiss.

"Where are your I94s?" asked the Canadian agent.

"Our - what?" replied my husband.

"Didn't they give you a form to fill in?"

"No, they just looked at our passports and waved us through"

We were then treated to a stern lecture about how we had just spent a day driving around Upstate New York as illegal immigrants, and how we could have been arrested, and how we should have known better... but how were we to know??

stut

Oh, the only US land border crossing I've had the pleasure of is the legendary San Ysidro.

Southbound, it was quite eerie. I crossed on foot, quite early on a Saturday morning (having got the trolley from San Diego) and walked through the various caged-in walkways, not expecting there to be, well, a total lack of anybody there - no officials, no pedestrians.

I walked through a turnstile and was there - in Mexico. Oddest border crossing I've ever done.

On the way back, the queue, in baking heat, was immense (although the various churros on sale along the way were pretty good). Some enterprising folks had set up a bicycle hire scheme to fast-track you through the border for $5 and, although I did smell scam, it worked a treat.

(Bringing the number of borders I've crossed by bike up to 3 - 4 if you include pre-clearance...)

I had been worried that the fact I hadn't been stamped into Mexico or had my I94W taken back would be a problem, but they seemed pretty relaxed about foreigners on day-trips through Tijuana. Wonder if that's still the case?

greggarious

I remember school trips to Canada - everyone had to bring a birth certificate, which got eyed all of 5 seconds. One girl had a passport, and got taken off the bus. Apparently they were stamping it, but we all freaked out because she'd been bragging about how she'd stashed a sack of weed in her shoe and figured the guard somehow knew. ("YOU WITH THE PURPLE HAIR. OFF THE BUS!")

Once flew to Seattle and drove across the border to Vancouver, since the cost of a flight to Seattle + rental car for the duration of the conference was cheaper than a flight to Vancouver. My business partner in the car with me was a Mexican citizen, and while they were polite, I felt like the Canadians kind of grilled him, even after we said we'd done the math and a rental was cheaper, and we liked having a rental while in Vancouver.

mrisoli

I have only crossed one border by land, the border from Cambodia to Thailand.

Its not exactly an interesting story, but its something nevertheless.

It starts with a hotel pickup in Siem Reap around 2am that leaves us near another hotel where the bus departs, from then it went about 3 hours until the border town of Poipet, the border itself is closed and only opens 7am, but we are allowed to sleep the next couple of hours until then.

This is a pretty rundown bus(I was disappointed, I was promised a bus with lie flat seats and got something really crap with uncomfortable seats, but hey, the whole trip cost 10 USD) and most people on it are backpackers such as myself, there's no luggage compartment on the bus and luggage is all placed on the back of the bus, I had my backpack with clothes on the back while valuables(like cameras, documents and a tablet) were in my small backpack which I held tight while I slept.

The scariest moment was when around 4am the bus stopped and someone came in, sat in the last seat(I was in the one just before), bag thieves are infamous in this route(the reverse route from Khao San Road), so for the remainder of the trip I did not sleep, I stared at the man continuosly, ready to react at any signs of thievery.

Fortunately, nothing happened, at 7am we go to passport control, the smell is foul, open sewers cross the border, I needed desperatly to go number 2 on the bathroom, but when I opened the door I gave up, the smell was unbearable.

We go through Poipet onwards to the 'Friendship Bridge', a neutral territory between both countries, there's a large cassino which I didn't enter, the smell continues and intensifies with every step we take, the journey is about 700m until the Thai border, the intense heat and our heavy backpacks do not help.

When we reach the Thai border at the town of Aranyaprathet visa control goes easily, I check the bathroom there but the smell is too much once again, we go across and follow as we had been previously instructed, a red square piece of paper glued on our shoulder signifies that our final destination is Bangkok, other colors signal for destinations such as Chiang Mai or Krabi.

Now in Thailand we are informed we have to walk another 300m to our next stop, a small diner that doesn't sell much besides popsicles, sodas and some unsanitary meals.

This is my heaven, I check the bathroom and this time I can stand the smell, its in the back of the restaurant a small toilet surrounded by cracked aluminum walls, the floor itself has little cement and grass spreads across the stall, toilet paper would be a luxury, thankfully, I had a spare roll with me for such emergencies.

After relieving myself a van comes(once again I was promised a bus point to point, got a stinking van instead), I was pushed to the back of a very crowded van where a german couple on my left talked during the whole trip, while a lonely chinese girl on my right who constantly bumped her head on my shoulder while trying to sleep through the bumpy road, or checked her cryptographical smartphone while awake.

It was very uncomfortable and we had only one stop during the long trip that lasted many hours, at which point we are dropped at famous Khao San Road to search for our hostel, despite every bad little thing, it was still a positive, cheap experience.

BuildingMyBento

And there's no more Czechoslovakia...I'd imagine that conversation with a border control officer would make for a good entry on this thread though.

BuildingMyBento

-When I lived in Shenzhen, I'd often go into Hong Kong, sometimes to get foodstuffs unavailable, but also because I wanted a passport stamp. What are some novel reasons to cross the border? Using the restroom, currency exchange for one note, claustrophobia groupie- how's your imagination these days? So, if I went three times in two days, I'd get an extra question or two from immigration.

-Walking from the DPRK side to the RoK side, in that blue barrack. I'll have to visit from the southerly side too.

-Driving towards Ottawa from the closest border checkpoint to Potsdam, NY (can't recall the name). I wanted a passport stamp, one of my friends had an expired green card, so that went well.

-I went on a food-motivated day trip to Tijuana last year. Took the light rail from downtown San Diego to San Ysidro, and mosied into Mexico without realizing it. The fish tacos were a treat. Coming back, the queue took two hours, and that's apparently a good day. Didn't even get a stamp. Not that there's anything welcoming about the US anyway.

stut

I was a student in Strasbourg for a while, and used to regularly head over to Germany and Switzerland (this was pre-Schengen and pre-Euro). Lots of things were cheaper there, and so I'd cycle over the Pont de l'Europe, take the city bus to Kehl, or the local train down to Basel (to arrive at a French territory station, with the most officious border guards in Switzerland, which was going some).

So, quite often, I'd cross the border to buy stationery, cigarettes and beer.

Even pre-Schengen, they were pretty lax in their passport control, which in turn made me complacent (being a British citizen, I don't have a national ID card which you could carry on you). Turns out German border guards don't like drunk, cycling students without a passport...

I quite often cross the Oresundsbroen for cheaper hotel accommodation (and food!) when Copenhagen fills up. Malmo is nice enough, and Lund is lovely.

I drove from the UK to Paris to buy wine for my wedding from a caviste recommended by a Parisian friend.

I caught the bus to Liechtenstein, just so I could cross the border. I cycled to De Panne for similar reasons.

I have crossed a border just to go to the toilet. Again, in pre-Schengen days, there was quite strict control between France and Switzerland in the split-down-the-middle Basel-Mulhouse airport. I'd arrived and was bound for the French side, but the toilets there were out of order. So I went through passport control to the Swiss side...

PRWeezer

I have crossed the Swiss/Italian border on skis (Zermatt to Cervinia & back). We were advised to take our passports but weren't required to check in anywhere. Though we did stop for pictures at the 'crossing' point.