Back from Poland, with trouble at Dover

Sunday, 21st April 1985

We left Wernigerode on the 1854 to Halberstadt and after half-an-hour there continued to Magdeburg, where we had a lengthy wait for the overnight train back to the west.  A week ago we might have had plans for an extensive pub crawl, but our experiences of the DDR and Poland had taught us that eastern European cities were not really set up for that sort of thing, so we settled for a meal and a few beers in the bar of one of the big hotels in the vicinity of the station.

One thing I did like about the DDR and eastern Europe in general - was the lack of garish commercial advertising in the streets. Public spaces that in the West would have been covered in advertisments for Coca-Cola or fast cars were free of such intrusions, although there was the occasional reminder to the populace of how fortunate they were to be living in a socialsit society, such as this bannr outside Magdeburg station.

Hard to imagine our government advertising its "economic strategy" (even if it had one)

The journey to Köln was our fourth overnight on a train in the last nine days, so it's perhaps not surprising that we remember very little of it.  Bob recalls that we crossed the border back into the west at Oebisfelde, despite our tickets being specifically for the more direct route via Helmstedt. That didn't seem to cause any bother, perhaps because the authorities were too  heavily focussed on preventing illegal travel by their own nationals to worry about whether a few western railway enthusiasts had the right tickets.

Bob's notes of the trip peter out at Köln, which we reached at 07.16 on Sunday morning and left again at 08.07 for Ostend. From there we would have  taken the ferry to Dover and arrived in the late afternoon.

Trouble at Dover

Our accounts of what happened at Dover not unsurprisingly vary, but a synthesis of Mark's and my recollections (Bob says he doesn't remember a thing) would be: 

At border control we were asked where we had travelled from.  Given that we had been travelling almost non-stop for nine days this wasn't an easy question to answer, but thinking that it would speed things up, one of us answered "Germany". We might have got away with that had be been in  a car, but even in the 1980s it was unusual for foot passengers to arrive back in the UK having made long, overland journeys by public transport.  "Where in Germany?" we were asked.  I don't know whether the official was actually suspicious of us or whether we mad merely aroused his interest on a long, boring Sunday afternoon shift at Dover docks.

But it was another impossible question, so someone answered "Well, Poland, actually!).  But border guards don't like people who change their story, so this really did arouse interest - and suspicion - . "So, first you tell me you have been to Germany and now you tell me you've been to Poland......"

Eventually we got though immigration, but it had taken longer than expected. I was now worried about missing the connecting train to London and we still had customs to contend with.  Mark and I were a little ahead of Bob as we entered an empty customs hall.  I knew that only random checks took place, but that if you were stopped you could be there for a while. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the customs officer watching me and he looked as if he was about to beckon me over for a search. Although I had nothing to hide I deliberately didn't catch his eye and kept on walking. He let me go and stopped Bob instead!  Looking back, I wonder if he thought I was playing a sort of double-bluff by acting as if I didn't want to be stopped, so that he would stop me and let Bob (who might have been the real smuggler) go through.  I don't know whether that was case or not, but Bob, unfortunately, did have a case to answer.

Whilst in Poland he had bought some local cigarettes, which were so awful that he couln't smoke them. They were still in his luggage - forgotten about - when he bought his full duty-free allowance on the boat, pushing him technically over the limit.  But after another interrogation he was let off, presumably on the basis that the Polish fags contained so little tobacco that it didn't really count towards the limit!

We arrived in London in the early evening, but too late for Bob and I to make our way home to Barnsley and Bolton respectively. We must have gone back to Mark's flat in Tooting, where despite him having been away from home and his beloved Helen for nine days we  went for a pub crawl to celebrate a bloody good holiday.

But that's not quite the end.....                                                                   to be concluded...