Monday October 30 2017, Vince Coen wrote to Ward Dossche:
>> 1) My granddaughter took an apple she got on the plane and was >> eating it while queueing for immigration. Based upon that we were >> ushered into a quarantaine zone. Our suitcase was emptied as well >> as our 2 small backpacks. Granddaughter had playdoh with her and >> it was analysed for drugs. Finally the head customs guy had a brain >> and considered it a non-event and let us go ... with the half eaten >> apple. I already had visions of 10-15 forced labor
>> 2) Upon passing security the scanner noticed some oddity between my >> legs and for the first time in my life I had another male hold my >> scrotum in his hands. That was a sensation ("slap my butt buddy")
>> 3) My granddaughter's backpack again was stopped by security. The >> 20 small vials of Playdoh again came out and this time were >> scrutinised, by the most uggly woman I've seen whose face propably >> was used for sorting shit, for explosives.
>> The paranoia knows no end ...
VC> They clearly do not want tourists / visitors entering their country VC> these days. At my age I have better things to do than waiting 2 - 4 VC> hours trying to enter country spending my money :(
VC> Try Canada - they seems to be more sensible
Several years ago I visited a friend of mine who lived in Canada and I entered Canada from the USA. It was just more convenient to have a flight from Moscow via New York. I spent several hours in Canadian customs. First I had to wait in a line for a free customs officer making a search. After that they not only took out and examined every item from my suit-case but also searched my laptop for child pornography. I had photos of a hardware debugger board in the laptop so I had to explain what was in the photos although it was quite clear it was not pornography.
It was all very unpleasant but on the positive side nobody tried to get into my pants.
