Penetrating The Fatherland
In my last Report From Exile, I told you about how I was charged with violating Paragraph 1 and forbidden return to Germany without a visa. Well, I had my visa, but I also had a long morning. And it was expanding by the minute, much like the universe...
After over an hour in Immigration and Customs, I was finally permitted back onto the sweet soil of our fecund Bundesrepublik -- and I mean fecund in an intellectual, lyrical, and literal sense. The distance between the front of the bipartite Customs booth and the back, hazarded by a little gate, laser sensor, and stern-looking officials, turns out to be a great one, and I had to leap the chasm with legs of rhetoric and hope.
Or at least proper credentials. Ben, the other half of this great trans-Atlantic effort, was good enough to fax me my temporary visa, which I neglected in my speedy departure and Marmite-encrusted visions of the blonde, loud London girls to come. I was assured by the German consulate in London and my Auslandsamt case worker that I would have no problems. So imagine my surprise when I was given the same barracks-house treatment as last time! Okay, I wasn't that surprised: I expected some resistance. And though the police captain was curt with me, he showed a certain gentility, a certain elision of formality, that was lacking in our last encounter. He explained to me that they didn't have the temporary visa on their computers, and would need to phone it in and check my file on the computer.
Which meant, in the meantime, another forced march to the restricted area. Regarding me as little more than a nuisance, the cops went to work on my file. They tapped a few keywords into the computer and watched attentively, five to six men in all, as they waited for... I don't know, some sort of signal as to what to do next. The tension was mammoth. I wriggled in my seat. Surrounded by Polizei in a cramped room, my paranoia evoked the turning point of Total Recall, when all of Hauser's friends abruptly turn against him and start attacking him. Unlike the Schwarz, I didn't fancy my chances in a scuffle with these well-armed public servants.
Finally, the silence broke, and the cops lost interest and drained out of the room, to presumably attend to some other non-EU citizens with dubious credentials. Turns out everything was in order -- I would be permitted to stay. The captain's new approach was cordial and nigh-on contrite. Well, these ones are never contrite, but I could feel the Gutenvibes. It was the way he extended his farewell, a bureaucrat's way of apologizing for the mix-up. "Yes, everything should be okay now. Here are all your papers. Are you sure you have everything? Welcome to Deutschland. Have a good stay during your time here," und so weiter. Ich werde ein Berliner sein!