Mission Impossible

"Expect up to a day wait at the Lithuanian-Poland border crossing," we read. "Try crossing on a Sunday evening." Well it was Sunday, 7:00 p.m. constituted evening so we pulled up to the first gate. There was no attempt from the guard in the booth to raise the red and white wooden beam that barred our entry. "Maybe I'm supposed to get out." And so I did; with passports in hand I waited in the pouring rain while the guard had a lengthy conversation with his friend. I'm sure the guard knew I was there, he looked right at me, but went right back to talking. I couldn't understand the words he said but his expression said, "See the power I have?"

When he did eventually acknowledged my existence, he merely glanced at the passports, looked up at me with disgust and pressed a button to raise the gate and allow us to move forward to the next booth. We received our Lithuania exit stamps there. It was fairly quick and we were again waved on to another booth and another gate. We were first in line; the customs booth far ahead had no line of cars and once again there was no viable reason for this gate to be down. But as we've learned, a customs official is a very powerful person; just his satisfaction in knowing that he can hold us up can be reason enough.

We waited and waited. Through our rain streaked windows we watched for a sign of activity. "Funny how it's rained at every border we've crossed in the last week," I said. "I hope this isn't a bad sign." But the sign that we chose to take notice of was the one that suddenly appeared outside the driver's window. It was a ray of hope, a good luck sign - a rainbow, every color visible in a perfect arch. That luck manifested itself in the form of one person in a car five behind us, one determined man wearing a tweed jacket.

We watched him with hopeful eyes, cheering him on as he marched to the booth, "Go get him!" we yelled. His arms waved; his voice commanded. With the same determination he then marched to the customs building. "Maybe he's a Somebody," I said hopefully. "Mr. Tweed Jacket could be our ticket out of here." But the minutes ticked and there was no sign of his triumphant return. The rainbow faded; we resigned ourselves to a wait in no-man's land, the neutral zone. We watched the line of cars in the other direction grow longer. A man got out of his car, lifted his car hood and begin a repair, another did some exercises. We watched the truck drivers pull up to fill the lanes to the right of the cars. We watched the rows become lines and the lines grow into snakes of people waiting to be let into and out of Lithuania. I began to doubt my earlier optimism. "Maybe Mr. Tweed Jacket is a Nobody after all." I was wrong. Just as I uttered those words, the road gate began slowly rising. "Mr. Tweed Jacket - our hero."

Nine cars were ahead of us when we pulled into the custom's line. Each was being thoroughly searched: trunks, interiors, engine compartments. "Let me do the talking this time John." At the Latvian Lithuanian border crossing we'd been asked what was in the van. John had said 'travel stuff'. I thought this situation demanded a bit more savvy. A Custom's inspector walked to our window and smiled. This was the first smile we'd seen at a border crossing, another good sign. We handed him our passports and he said something in Polish. "I'm sorry, do you speak English?" Again he said something in Polish. We sat there, dumb looks on our faces and shrugged. A shrug of victory, he waved us on. "You see the way I handled that?"

We were almost to the other side. Poland was only meters away. But first another custom's officer. He stepped to the driver's window again testing our Polish language skills. When in doubt hand over the passports, it's worked for us so far. In broken English he asked if we were going through to Germany (presumably because we were driving a German van). "Yes, yes we are." Kerchunk - two Polish entry stamps.

At 7:52 we pulled into Poland. I looked back at the line of cars. Everyone behind us was being searched. I wonder if we had escaped that tedious task because we produced Americans passports or because we looked too innocent to understand the ins and out of smuggling anything worthwhile.

Our first glimpse of Poland looked a lot like what we had seen at the border station. A long line of trucks, 4.5 kilometers of them waiting (perhaps for days) to enter Lithuania. My heart went out to them; they might not be blessed with a 'Man in a Tweed Jacket'.

Further down the road the scenery changed. Lithuania had been flat; Poland was all rolling hills. The only similarity between the two countries, apart from cows, hay stacks, cement-poled electric lines and a line at the customs booth was a rainbow on this side too.