Originally Posted by
chrisboote
I have had the misfortune to be in the situation where my wife left two days early, taking my passport with her, and the Germans could not have been more efficient or helpful (no surprises there) at Duesseldorf, in marked contrast to the UK who left me cooling my heels for over an hour while they went through the same checks that their Teutonic colleagues completed in under fifteen minutes
Although it shouldn't take an hour, the difference was that you were leaving Germany and trying to enter the UK. If you had been trying to enter Germany without your passport I don't believe it would have gone so smoothly.