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Post by jeanne on May 21, 2017 22:38:54 GMT 1
This past week I was visiting family in Vermont. Coming home I boarded a bus in Burlington, Vermont for Boston.
The bus had originated in Montreal, Canada before stopping in Burlington. After we boarded the bus, four plain-clothes Border Patrol officers boarded. Two proceeded to the rear of the bus, and two stood guard at the front, with the door closed. The two at the back worked their way down the aisle, asking each person if they were a U.S. citizen. If they weren't, they had to produce an passport, which a few had to do.
It was upsetting because in the U.S. we aren't used to such things...I've never seen it before.
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Post by pjotr on May 22, 2017 3:34:21 GMT 1
Looks like my East-German/Polish border experience. Passport bite! Woher sind sie. Sie sind kein Amerikanerin? Raus, nach draußen.
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Post by Bonobo on May 22, 2017 21:55:38 GMT 1
This past week I was visiting family in Vermont. Coming home I boarded a bus in Burlington, Vermont for Boston. The bus had originated in Montreal, Canada before stopping in Burlington. After we boarded the bus, four plain-clothes Border Patrol officers boarded. Two proceeded to the rear of the bus, and two stood guard at the front, with the door closed. The two at the back worked their way down the aisle, asking each person if they were a U.S. citizen. If they weren't, they had to produce an passport, which a few had to do. It was upsetting because in the U.S. we aren't used to such things...I've never seen it before. Does it mean they were looking for illegal immigrants on a bus from Canada?   |
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Post by jeanne on May 22, 2017 23:39:48 GMT 1
This past week I was visiting family in Vermont. Coming home I boarded a bus in Burlington, Vermont for Boston. The bus had originated in Montreal, Canada before stopping in Burlington. After we boarded the bus, four plain-clothes Border Patrol officers boarded. Two proceeded to the rear of the bus, and two stood guard at the front, with the door closed. The two at the back worked their way down the aisle, asking each person if they were a U.S. citizen. If they weren't, they had to produce an passport, which a few had to do. It was upsetting because in the U.S. we aren't used to such things...I've never seen it before. Does it mean they were looking for illegal immigrants on a bus from Canada? Apparently...One of Trump's campaign promises was to "tighten the borders" to keep the illegals out...I suppose he deserves some credit for keeping his word... |
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Post by jeanne on May 22, 2017 23:41:32 GMT 1
Looks like my East-German/Polish border experience. Passport bite! Woher sind sie. Sie sind kein Amerikanerin? Raus, nach draußen. My experience was unsettling, so I really can only imagine how scary your family's experience was at the East German/Polish border!! |
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Post by pjotr on May 22, 2017 23:57:08 GMT 1
Dear Jeanne, That was the most scarry part, but all encounter with the East-German border guards with their uniforms and peak caps, trousers and long black boots looked very much like Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS men. When we went by car through the West-German/East-German border the strict passportcontrol, car control, waiting and staring of the East-German border guards was annoying and scary. Inside the DDR you could be victim of the Volskpolizei (Peoples police) if they set up traps along the Highway. Suddenly in a few dozen meters they had suddenly signs 100 km per hour, 60 km/p/h, 40 km p/h and then 20 km p/h. That was called a Currency trap. We had to stop and the East-German Volkspolizei came to our car and asked a lot of Westmarks from my father for the traffic violation he couldn't avoid because the speed limitation came suddenly, unannounced and to late. The East-German Mark was worthless and the West German D Mark (Deutschmark) and the Dutch Guldens were worth more. This video shows excactly what I experienced back then with my car when we went inside East-Germany from the West-German side. Only it was more crowded when we were there and there were more borderguards in our case. Our experience was worse than in the movie below, because my father with some Second World war anti-German sentiments was tense and to hot blooded at that moment. You could feel the tension and my fathers dislike of these East-German ideological border guards in their uniforms. (My father saw in them the Wehrmacht and SS soldiers and officers of the war, the same arrogance, damn kraut [Mof in Dutch] mentality. Damn Krauts [Moffen] I heard him say. We were nervous that my father would get an argument with the East-Germans.  This is excactly how the Grenztruppen Der DDR looked like.    You felt it, you saw it, you heard it and experienced it as soon as you entered the West-German/East-German border zone, the feeling of a concentration camps, the Wall in Berlin or the Iron Curtain on the West-German/East-German border. A huge fortified fence with heavy concrete structures behind it, watchtowers, men in these typical Prussian Wehrmacht style, East-German version uniforms. Tall telescopes directed at you, guys in the watchtowers or one the wall watching you with Binoculars. Video camera's and you saw that the space between the various fortified fences and walls was nowmansland with landmines and East German Grenztruppen (border guard forces) with machine guns, rifles and probably other arms. Bonobo was right when he wrote somewhere that these East-German border guards shot about 300 or more East-German civilians who tried to escape to the West. Worse was when we had travelled over the East-German highway for maybe 200 or 250 miles (from the West-German/East-German border to the Polish border) and then arrived at that borders. More traffic, more border guards, East-German border troops. Tension, a lot of checks, cars that were dismantled in front of our eyes (we were sorry for the people, wether they were Germans, Poles, Czechs or had other nationalities). And you stood there for hours, sometimes 5 hours. A long row of miles of trucks, cars, mini busses, vans, motorbikes and etc. The East-German border guards were strict, blunt, agressive, and if you were not lucky, you could have the wrong kind of Polish border guards and customs officers on the other side (the strict, ideological, blunt, square faced, Communist apparatchiks). If we had the wrong kind of Poles there than we had a bad time entering Poland, and if we were lucky we had relaxed, easy and not so strict Polish border guards. With a sigh of relief we then entered Poland on the very bad old bumpy highway, but with wonderful woods and people who stood by the street with large baskets or plastic bags with mushrooms and Chanterelles. We always bough a lot of them and then my Polish babcia (grandmother) who was an excellent cook made a wonderful Polish dish with these Chanterelles, Polish meet, maybe with Pierogi, Kluski or other Polish dishes I forgot. /about/sponge-basket-1194380_960_720-58153cc25f9b581c0b117ffb.jpg) The Chanterelles the Polish people picket in the forest along the highway near the East-German border and which they sold to us This is a famous photo sequence of the East-German soldier Hans Conrad Schumann who escapes to the West. Hans Conrad Schumann (March 28, 1942 – June 20, 1998) was an East German soldier who famously defected to West Germany during the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. |
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Post by jeanne on May 23, 2017 23:55:06 GMT 1
Dear Jeanne, That was the most scarry part, but all encounter with the East-German border guards with their uniforms and peak caps, trousers and long black boots looked very much like Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS men. When we went by car through the West-German/East-German border the strict passportcontrol, car control, waiting and staring of the East-German border guards was annoying and scary. Inside the DDR you could be victim of the Volskpolizei (Peoples police) if they set up traps along the Highway. Suddenly in a few dozen meters they had suddenly signs 100 km per hour, 60 km/p/h, 40 km p/h and then 20 km p/h. That was called a Currency trap. We had to stop and the East-German Volkspolizei came to our car and asked a lot of Westmarks from my father for the traffic violation he couldn't avoid because the speed limitation came suddenly, unannounced and to late. The East-German Mark was worthless and the West German D Mark (Deutschmark) and the Dutch Guldens were worth more. This video shows excactly what I experienced back then with my car when we went inside East-Germany from the West-German side. Only it was more crowded when we were there and there were more borderguards in our case. Our experience was worse than in the movie below, because my father with some Second World war anti-German sentiments was tense and to hot blooded at that moment. You could feel the tension and my fathers dislike of these East-German ideological border guards in their uniforms. (My father saw in them the Wehrmacht and SS soldiers and officers of the war, the same arrogance, damn kraut [Mof in Dutch] mentality. Damn Krauts [Moffen] I heard him say. We were nervous that my father would get an argument with the East-Germans. I'm sure those uniforms struck fear into the hearts of many people! I'm glad your father was able to refrain from speaking his mind to the East Germans! It's kind of funny, I would almost have preferred that the Border Patrol officers who boarded the bus were in uniform; then I would have definitely known that they were government officials. Instead, they were dressed in casual clothes with no indication of their positions. I'm sure they had ID's, but no one asked to see them. They were very polite and kind, there was no ugliness, but the whole experience was unsettling because it just was not something Americans have had to deal with before.(At least not in my area of the country...perhaps near the Mexican border, but not near the Canadian border.) p.s. One of my daughters attended college in the state of North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She and her friends would go into the woods looking for Chanterelles, with much success! |
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