Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 February 2006 13:52:35
I used a tie as a passport.
It's a little known consequence of growing up in an island nation that you don't associate going on a train with needing a passport. Of course you wouldn't need a passport if you're going somewhere by train, would you? Unfortunately, that all changed twelve years ago, but we (or at least I) haven't necessarily adjusted to it.
I was living in Germany but having to travel to the UK almost every weekend (for reasons that I'll probably get around to explaining some other day). The cheapest and most civilized way was by train from Cologne to Brussels and then Eurostar to London. And if you do the same trip so often then you get blaisé about things and that's when you start forgetting things. Like passports.
So it was that one day passing through Aachen (about mid way between Cologne and Brussels) I realized that I didn't have my passport. Oops. Fortunately on a moving train the immediate options are rather limited, so I had time to think through the available courses of action before having to choose.
The sensible plan was, of course, to get off at the next station, buy a ticket back to Cologne, go back to my flat, spend the night there (because the journey to the UK takes most of the day), book a new Eurostar ticket (the cheap ones being non-transferable) and start again the next day. The alternative was to stay on the train, arrive at Brussels and hope to blag my way through passport control and into England, and then worry about getting back to Germany later. So that is what I did.
More precisely, I arrived at Brussels and explained to the Eurostar passport control people what had happened and they were very reassuring and said I would have absolutely no problem getting into England without a passport because I was British. (I can't help thinking that being racially white was relevant as well, but let's not be uncharitable). They almost persuaded me that I should just get on the train to London. And I didn't need much persuading. And sure enough, when I got to passport control at Waterloo and babbled as much as possible as quickly as possible (to show my flawless grasp of that flawed English that only natives speak) about what had happened, they just waved me through.
That just left the problem of getting back into Germany after the weekend. Which is where the tie came in. I was fairly confident of getting into Britain because I knew fundamentally the passport people would be sympathetic to someone of their own nationality. And British immigration officials are, no matter what people say, infinitely gentler than European ones. (They don't have sub-machine guns for a start, and they look old enough to know how to shave). So I needed a strategy to get through passport control at Brussels. I thought that my best hope was to be dressed as smartly as possible, so I took a trip to Tie Rack at Waterloo (not a shop I had ever used before, or since) to buy the most respectable tie I could find. I almost went to the assistant and said "I need the most respectable tie you can sell me" but I thought that would seem too suspicious. Eventually, I settled on a very sombre silk tie which set me back a fair amount but which I considered money well spent. And I got on the train and spent three very anxious hours. What language should I use at Brussels? If the official was a French-speaker then they would be offended if I use anything but French. But if they were Flemish-speaking then French would be the most offensive language I could use (and Flemish wasn't an option unfortunately). So should I use English, and guarantee equal offence? I decided finally that if I spoke French and babbled then, at least, my British accent should sound loud and clear.
At last, when I got to the head of the queue, I was faced with one of those wonderful European officials who says nothing but just stares at you like you are the most despicable criminal they have ever seen. I babbled. I wittered. I talked more than I had probably talked in my entire life before. And he just stared. And stared. And then waved me through. I never forgot my passport again after that.