Border
4½ Hours to Cross the Border
We were approaching the Polish – Belarusian border from the Polish side in May 2006. None of us (me, my wife, and son) spoke a word of Polish, Belarusian, or Russian. About a kilometer from the border, traffic stopped. As we pulled our German registered rental car in behind the last car in the queue, it became quite clear to us that this line was not moving particularly rapidly. In fact, all the cars’ engines were turned off. The driver in the car in front of us was fast asleep. Many of the other cars didn’t even have drivers in them. If there were more than one lane, we would have driven forward to see what was happening ahead, but we were on a long, dusty, poorly-paved country road with just one lane in each direction. We also did not want to risk losing our place in the line. So, we stopped the engine. Meanwhile, a car with two twenty-something men stopped next to our car and said something to us in Polish; when we indicated that we didn’t speak Polish, they said, “faster” and rubbed their fingers together to indicate that if we paid them, they’d get us through the line faster. We declined. Instead, Ginny stayed in the car while Mike and I started the trek toward the front of the line to find out what the story was. We walked the kilometer to the border crossing. All the way, we noticed not a single vehicle approaching us from the opposite direction. When we got to the head of the queue, we found three border guards who were letting one vehicle through every 3-4 minutes. At this rate, it would take us more than 12 hours to get to the head of the line! But we also noticed that occasionally a car with speed in the left lane past all the cars and sneak in to the head of the queue. The guards did not seem to worry about this, although it certainly seemed downright rude to me.
Rather than wait for 12 hours, I decided we would “play dumb” and try the same trick. I figured that if anybody stopped us, we’d (honestly) plead incapable of understanding the rules. Mike and I started our long trek back, past cars and trucks, families having picnics beside their idle vehicles, crying babies, old men and women, and many dozens of cars pulling trailers with other vehicles atop them. We finally made it back to our rented Volkswagen Golf.
We drove past all the crying babies and went to the front of the line. There, a Polish border guide asked us something in Polish. We flashed our US passports. He yelled something in Polish to the next guard; it sounded like “Americansa diplomatica.” They waved us through.
We later learned that some poor Belarusians made a living buying cheap cigarettes and liquor in their native Belarus, driving to Poland, where they sold these for a bit more money, and returning back to Belarus the same day. By their standards, a good day meant that they could make two roundtrips; a bad day meant just one roundtrip. It turns out that the cars lined up on the Polish side were all Belarusian cars doing their daily roundtrips. Due to their unique circumstances, they were relegated to a different line than all others.
We now found ourselves on one of a half-dozen lines of cars. Each had maybe 10 cars. Most of the other cars were being pushed by their drivers as their lines crept up; we did not understand, so we used our engines. When we finally got to the front of the line, the next uniformed officer asked us a bunch of questions in some language we did not understand. In each case, we just shrugged and said we didn’t understand what he was talking about. Finally, he said something like, “passeport.” We gave him our passports; he quickly stamped them and waved us on. I asked him in English if we needed to declare all of our electronic equipment (we had been told previously that we must declare our electronic equipment upon entering Belarus, or else they would charge us an export duty on all of it as we exited Belarus). He simply said, “later.”
We thought we had just successfully passed through Polish and Belarusian customs. One kilometer later, we came upon another long line of cars. It turns out that we had thus far just been through two levels of Polish customs. Only now were we about to enter Belarus. Upon approaching the line of cars, we said to ourselves, “driving past the long line of cars just worked in Poland; let’s try it again.” So, we went into the left lane. A half kilometer later, we went over a long bridge (still in the left lane). Half way across the bridge, a Belarusian customs guard was waiting for us. He asked us something in Russian; we waved our US passports at him. He said, “okay,” and waved us on. That seemed easy! At the far end of the bridge, we came to three more Belarusian customs guards. These guys meant business! They spoke to us in a language unintelligible to us, but it was clear they were furious at us. The car in front of us had French diplomatic plates. The officers showed us those plates and shouted “Diplomats something (I assume it meant ‘only’)!” and pointed in the direction from whence we came. He wanted us to return to the end of the line. They were angry. Just then, a diplomatic van pulled up behind us. There was absolutely no way for us to get back over the bridge. Once again, I decided to play dumb. I knew if we waited there, they would have no choice but to send us through. So, after about ten minutes, they finally disgustingly signaled that we could drive up to the gate. The 200 or so cars waiting in the right lane could not have been happy about it. These three guards spend 30 minutes looking through our passports. One would examine every page, and every time he found an “interesting” stamp, he called the other two guys over to look at it. I’m sure he was particularly fascinated by the stamps from Korea, Nigeria, Namibia, Botswana, multiple trips to Japan, many stamps from South America, and so on. Finally, they handed back our passports and waved us on.
A full hour had past since we arrived at the end of the first line. This was much quicker than the two hours that a website of an earlier traveler had warned us of. Little, did we know that our passage over the border had barely started.
We traveled a few hundred feet and found six lines of stopped vehicles. The two lines on the left were short and were marked with large red circles. The four on the right were quite long and were marked with large green triangles. Based on my experience with airport-based customs stations, I assumed that the red lines were for “declaring goods for import” and the green lines were for “nothing to declare.” Rather than wait in the long lines, we decided to join the shorter red lines. After about 15 minutes, we got to the head of the queue. A guard saw our license plate, and hollered at us while pointing towards the back of the green lines. So much for using our previous customs experience. We drove back to the end of the long lines. After an hour of waiting here, we finally got to the front. A guard signaled us to park in the parking lot ahead. So we did. Figure 1 shows the venue in general and the space, P, where we were commanded to park. Every other space in the lot was occupied and people from the cars as well as uniformed customs officers were standing everywhere. The purpose of every building must have been indicated, but as we could understand neither Russian nor Belarusian, the buildings might as well have been named A, B, C, D, E, F, and so on, as shown below.
Without any guidance to the contrary, I approached Building E, where most of the activity seemed to be taking place. After waiting a few minutes, I showed our three USA passports to the officer. He yelled something to me and pointed to the next building. So, we picked up our passports and joined the line at Building C. When we got to the front, a mustached thirty-something year old man in uniform took our passports and examined them in between swatting at the constant onslaught of mosquitoes that infested his little building as well as all the rest in the complex. He handed us a customs declaration form (in English!) and told us to fill it in and return it to him. So we did. On page two, the form requested us to declare all of our electronic equipment and other valuables. We had been previously told that we should pay careful attention to creating this list so that Belarusian authorities couldn’t charge export duties on them when exiting the country. After completing the form, we got back on his line, and upon reaching his desk, he and the other officer in the building carefully went through the entire list of declared items. They carefully examined our two iPods, even insisting on listening to them. They examined our camera, my watch, and so on down the list of 10 or so items. At the completion, he proceeded to use an ancient PC to fill in around 4 or 5 different forms authorizing our entry and our car’s entry into the country. Finally, it spat out the forms on an equally ancient printer. He asked us to sign all the forms. Then he gave me back my customs declaration form, and asked me to redo it without any of the valuables listed. Don’t ask me why! We obliged, got back on his line; he handed me all the previously signed forms and told me in Russian to go to Building K. After waiting 10-15 minutes at a line, I met the guards in Building K who proceeded to stamp all my forms, use their old PC to print another form, handed the entire pile back to me, and dismissed me.
I had no choice but to go back on line to see the guard in Building C. This time, he inspected all the stamps, added yet more stamps of his own (especially to the new form). I later learned that Building K had provided an application for a temporary Belarusian registration form for my rented car. Then he told me that he needed five copies of all the forms. He pointed back to the cluster of buildings on the other side of the parking lot. Upon arriving, and not knowing which building I was supposed to us, I noticed a young woman standing outside one of the L buildings. She spoke enough English to understand that I needed copies, and so she escorted me to Building I, where I once again stood on a long line, this time in a tiny building reeking of sweat. When I got to the front, my escort “friend” asked them to make copies. They produced just one copy of each form. I tried to explain that I needed five copies, but nobody was understanding me (or else they knew that I had misunderstood the guard concerning how many copies I needed). Another ten minutes of miscommunication, and I finally figured out that I needed to pay for the copies.
I returned and waited on line for my guard in Building C. He took the copies, filed them away, stamped one of the forms in my hands, told me something in Russian and pointed to building J, labeled in Russian, but it was easy to tell it was vehicle registration. So, I went back over there and handed the folks in Building J all my forms. They stamped a few of the forms, added one new form, asked me to sign it, collected a fee, gave me a receipt, and sent me on my way. Upon returning to Building C, I found my guard absent. After waiting on line for a while, I showed all my papers to the guard who had shared the building with my mustached guard. He looked over all the papers, and sent me to Building D. After a few minutes, he noticed that I was waiting outside otherwise unoccupied Building D; he came out to tell me that I should move over to Building F instead. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Buildings B, D, F, and H were identical in functionality. Building F had around ten people milling about it, but the female guard in this building saw me and immediately asked me to come forward. She examined all the paperwork and said something to me in Russian. She tried explaining something to me a few different ways, but I could not understand a word she said. Finally, in frustration, she asked another person on the line to show me what to do next. He indicated that he wanted me to follow him. So I followed him to Buildings L! It turns out that these were the three companies “competing” to sell us medical insurance. Interestingly enough, all are at least 51% government owned. I approached the young woman who had assisted me before in obtaining the copies. She was happy to sell me insurance. Amazingly, the insurance cost us a mere US$10 for the three of us.
Now I returned to Building F (which turned out to be passport control). She very carefully reviewed and stamped all three passports. Then she added her own stamps to all of the other forms, and sent us on our way. But we had no idea what to do next. So I returned to Building C, where I was told we could leave! We got into our car and drove away. When we got to Building M, the guard was facing the other way, so we stopped, waited a few minutes, and then drove off. As we departed, we heard a whistle. I looked in my rear view mirror and could see the guard from Building M waving his arms at us to stop. We stopped. He ran to our car and was yelling at us in Russian. I handed him all our papers. He took one of them, yelled at us again, and signaled us to leave. This time we really left. Four and a half hours had transpired since we arrived at the Polish side of the border crossing!
Seven days later, we exited Belarus into the Ukraine. The border crossing was flawless. Friendly guards on both sides. No duties, no inspections. Entire process took less than 30 minutes.
© Alan M. Davis
