Your call is Important to Us. Please Hold.
Poland 1979
A visitor arriving in Warsaw from Moscow by Aeroflot wanted simply to stay overnight before catching an American plane to the United States. He knew that he could obtain a short-term visa at immigration offices in the airport.
It was possible, but it sure wasn't quick. It took several hours for a single clerk to process a single application. Most of the time seemed to be taken by the clerk sitting silently at a desk on one side of a barrier, while I, the applicant, sat silently on the other side. There was no one else around, no other applicants and no other clerks. My passport and the application lay in front of him on the desk. After a suitable time, while he fiddled with other papers, he signed the application, stamped it and the passport several times with different stamps, and then called me over to hand it back. After that I was free to get currency changed, and then to start the search for a cab to the city and a hotel for the night.
It turned out that I should have been more patient and asked for more pieces of paper to be duly signed and stamped by all concerned, perhaps at another airport office.
The visit over-night was a success. I sampled 24 hours of Warsaw life; slept, ran, ate, walked through the old town and along the river, and shopped. In due course I returned to the airport for my next flights to Hamburg and to the U.S.
All was well until I came to the Polish Customs. The customs lady was obviously an accomplished weight lifter -- in the heavyweight class -- certainly not a person upon whom you would practice Polish jokes. She was happily mishandling people's baggage on a long steel counter leading to the security gate for the flights. Each passenger would laboriously lift his or her case onto the counter and the customs lady would flip it over with one hand while she glared at its owner. Passengers were, without exception, meek before her.
I was meek too.
I offered my cases: my soft-sided running bag and my camera case. She ignored them and said something guttural and unintelligible. It couldn't have been in my phrase book. I looked politely quizzical. More guttural sounds and this time something, which ended in "paper". I had to remain quizzical -- "currency paper" -- and I remembered the system in the Soviet Union.
There everything valuable had to be declared on entry and then checked with receipts on exit. This female Goliath was asking for that currency form -- something I had not obtained on entry 24 hours earlier. I tried to explain, realizing that the affair of getting a temporary visa had forced me to enter the country separated from the normal passengers and somehow this vital form had not been completed.
I didn't have it. I said so. She said that I had to have it. She also said, "Without paper you can not leave," this time in English as clear as a bell, and she swept me aside, away from her counter. I was apparently dispatched as being unqualified to leave Poland, and that was that. She had no suggestions. It looked as though I might be in trouble.
I stood my ground in front of her with fast disappearing courage.
"It is not my fault."
"Without paper you can not leave."
She turned to the next passenger and started checking luggage again. However, my bags were in the way and she tried to push them off the counter towards me. I pushed them back. She pushed them away. I pushed them back. I wasn't as strong, but I was persistent. There was a low gentle mumbling from the passengers behind me who realized that they might miss their flights if this crazy American, who didn't know enough to have the right papers, wasn't cleared quickly.
As my robust customs lady and I traded pushes with my luggage, the mumbling got louder and more distinct. It could have been as much against me, as for me, but it did the trick. My heavyweight opponent realized that I could be more trouble than I was worth. I threatened to extend her workday. She threw her hefty arms to the sky -- glared at me -- and, impatiently, waved me on. If I had been standing where her arm swept forward I would have been hefted right past the next security check. I was on my way again.
But I could have still been there!
Utter Pradesh, India
A snake charmer in India released 40 poisonous snakes, including a number of cobras, onto the floor of a Government Land Registry Office to protest the delay of a new land permit. (Yahoo News from the U.K. Guardian, Telegraph and AFP, December 5, 2011)
Hakkul also accused bureaucrats in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh of demanding bribes for his land application:
"I am a conservationist and have been seeking the government's help. Having waited patiently for so long, I had no option but to leave all my snakes in this office," Hakkul said he received promise of a land permit two years ago so that he would have a place for his snakes to live.
The government says it has continued to delay Hakkul's request because snake charmers are illegal.
"He had applied for a plot of land to keep his snakes," Subhash Mani Tripathi, the head of land-revenue administration. "But there is no provision for such a business. Instead of seeking a written reply, which we would have issued, Hakkul created panic by letting loose a bunch of snakes all over the office."
He certainly got those civil servants’ interest and attention.
Return to 'Books.'
A visitor arriving in Warsaw from Moscow by Aeroflot wanted simply to stay overnight before catching an American plane to the United States. He knew that he could obtain a short-term visa at immigration offices in the airport.
It was possible, but it sure wasn't quick. It took several hours for a single clerk to process a single application. Most of the time seemed to be taken by the clerk sitting silently at a desk on one side of a barrier, while I, the applicant, sat silently on the other side. There was no one else around, no other applicants and no other clerks. My passport and the application lay in front of him on the desk. After a suitable time, while he fiddled with other papers, he signed the application, stamped it and the passport several times with different stamps, and then called me over to hand it back. After that I was free to get currency changed, and then to start the search for a cab to the city and a hotel for the night.
It turned out that I should have been more patient and asked for more pieces of paper to be duly signed and stamped by all concerned, perhaps at another airport office.
The visit over-night was a success. I sampled 24 hours of Warsaw life; slept, ran, ate, walked through the old town and along the river, and shopped. In due course I returned to the airport for my next flights to Hamburg and to the U.S.
All was well until I came to the Polish Customs. The customs lady was obviously an accomplished weight lifter -- in the heavyweight class -- certainly not a person upon whom you would practice Polish jokes. She was happily mishandling people's baggage on a long steel counter leading to the security gate for the flights. Each passenger would laboriously lift his or her case onto the counter and the customs lady would flip it over with one hand while she glared at its owner. Passengers were, without exception, meek before her.
I was meek too.
I offered my cases: my soft-sided running bag and my camera case. She ignored them and said something guttural and unintelligible. It couldn't have been in my phrase book. I looked politely quizzical. More guttural sounds and this time something, which ended in "paper". I had to remain quizzical -- "currency paper" -- and I remembered the system in the Soviet Union.
There everything valuable had to be declared on entry and then checked with receipts on exit. This female Goliath was asking for that currency form -- something I had not obtained on entry 24 hours earlier. I tried to explain, realizing that the affair of getting a temporary visa had forced me to enter the country separated from the normal passengers and somehow this vital form had not been completed.
I didn't have it. I said so. She said that I had to have it. She also said, "Without paper you can not leave," this time in English as clear as a bell, and she swept me aside, away from her counter. I was apparently dispatched as being unqualified to leave Poland, and that was that. She had no suggestions. It looked as though I might be in trouble.
I stood my ground in front of her with fast disappearing courage.
"It is not my fault."
"Without paper you can not leave."
She turned to the next passenger and started checking luggage again. However, my bags were in the way and she tried to push them off the counter towards me. I pushed them back. She pushed them away. I pushed them back. I wasn't as strong, but I was persistent. There was a low gentle mumbling from the passengers behind me who realized that they might miss their flights if this crazy American, who didn't know enough to have the right papers, wasn't cleared quickly.
As my robust customs lady and I traded pushes with my luggage, the mumbling got louder and more distinct. It could have been as much against me, as for me, but it did the trick. My heavyweight opponent realized that I could be more trouble than I was worth. I threatened to extend her workday. She threw her hefty arms to the sky -- glared at me -- and, impatiently, waved me on. If I had been standing where her arm swept forward I would have been hefted right past the next security check. I was on my way again.
But I could have still been there!
Utter Pradesh, India
A snake charmer in India released 40 poisonous snakes, including a number of cobras, onto the floor of a Government Land Registry Office to protest the delay of a new land permit. (Yahoo News from the U.K. Guardian, Telegraph and AFP, December 5, 2011)
Hakkul also accused bureaucrats in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh of demanding bribes for his land application:
"I am a conservationist and have been seeking the government's help. Having waited patiently for so long, I had no option but to leave all my snakes in this office," Hakkul said he received promise of a land permit two years ago so that he would have a place for his snakes to live.
The government says it has continued to delay Hakkul's request because snake charmers are illegal.
"He had applied for a plot of land to keep his snakes," Subhash Mani Tripathi, the head of land-revenue administration. "But there is no provision for such a business. Instead of seeking a written reply, which we would have issued, Hakkul created panic by letting loose a bunch of snakes all over the office."
He certainly got those civil servants’ interest and attention.
Return to 'Books.'