Adventure at the Polish Border with ‘Robert Redford’ & ‘John Candy’
I don't normally write travel pieces, but this is an account I had back in 1998. Photo by Imre Tömösvári on Unsplash.
It doesn’t take two weeks to drive through Spain, France, and Germany, my highlighted route to Poland, but that’s how long I’d been roaring across Europe in a rented Renault, living off fast food, spending nights in youth hostels, going anywhere the Rand McNally map I’d bought in Madrid unfolded on the passenger seat led.
My brother was flying into Warsaw from New York for the reunion with our father’s extended family, and I hoped to get there the day before he arrived.
At the Polish border, I assumed my position in the queue of cars waiting to cross. When the one ahead of me sped off, I moved up and fished in my pocket for my passport and proffered it to a blonde epauletted German border official resembling actor Robert Redford, who disappeared with it inside a boxy metallic guard station.
He returned a minute later.
“Papiere für das Auto.”
You know that look people give when they have no idea what you’re talking about? That was how I responded.
“Papiere für das Auto,” he repeated.
“Sprechen Sie Englisch?” I asked.
“Nein,” he replied.
I thought that odd considering everyone — and I mean everyone — I met in Germany spoke English.
Another epauletted gentleman stepped over. He also said something in German that didn’t at all resemble what his compatriot said.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I replied. “I don’t speak German.”
“Robert Redford” then commanded, in English, with effort, “Papers for the car.”
I popped open the glove compartment and rifled a few seconds through napkins and ketchup packets for the rental agreement from Avis.
“Robert Redford” practically ripped it from my grasp and stormed off with it.
I glanced up into my rear-view mirror to see a line of cars growing behind me. If this had been back home in New York, there would have been a cacophony of horns and profanity.
“Robert Redford” returned, this time with a female even more impressively epauletted than both men. Wisps of golden hair peeked from her beige cap.
“Driver’s license,” she said in nearly accent-less English.
I slid my New York state driver’s license from my wallet and passed it to her. All three of them disappeared back into the station.
After what felt like half an hour but was probably only a few minutes Robert Redford approached my window again, shoving the rental documents at me, pointing a long finger at the line YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO ENTER THE FOLLOWING COUNTRIES WITH YOUR RENTED VEHICLE: BELARUS, LITHUANIA, ESTONIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, HUNGARY, CROATIA, RUSSIA, POLAND.
Wait…Poland?
Oh, shit.
I looked up at the guy, who was already pointing at the road ahead of me, motioning with a finger a repeated half-circle, and ordered, “You turn. You turn.”
I understood: I was to cross into Poland and turn around.
Doing so put me in line this time among drivers entering Germany.
A few minutes later I found myself confronting another border official, this one Polish, who bore an uncanny resemblance to the late Canadian movie actor John Candy, who tolerated no ignorance of his language nor what I attempted to communicate about why I was at his border without a passport, still in Robert Redford’s possession. As soon as I stated, “It’s right there. There Germans have it,” pointing to the direction from whence I came, he shot his hand up and walked away to attend to those behind me.
When he returned, it was like the previous exchange had never happened. “Paszport,” he demanded.
“It’s over there,” I repeated. “He has it.” I indicated the German officer watching all this.
If you’ve never been a recipient of strains of Polish profanity, there is no way for you to comprehend the implicit admonishment contained in a vocabulary so laden with consonants, particularly the letter “Z”. It’s even more effective when that recipient doesn’t understand a word of it.
The Polish John Candy, like his Teutonic counterpart, extended a meaty finger at a pull-off area. I steered the car toward it to await further instructions.
Robert Redford stepped a little closer to the car and started shouting. I thought shaking one’s fist in the air was just something people did in melodramas, but there he was, wagging his up above his head like waving a flag, filling the air with German expletives I’m happy I couldn’t understand. Then the Polish John Candy started in as well as I found myself in the center of an international profanity purge the likes of which haven’t been heard since that scene in A Christmas Story when Raphie’s father curses out the furnace.
But Robert Redford had something in his other hand — the one with which he wasn’t punching the air: my passport and car rental documents.
What the hell was he planning on doing with them now?
Documents in hand, he waved me back toward him. I crept the car back to the German border, where he proceeded to relinquish first the rental papers, then my license.
My passport came last.
I looked then up into his ice-blue eyes and said in the calmest tone I could, “I know you don’t understand a thing I’m saying, but I’m really sorry this all happened.”
In flawless English he claimed earlier not to know, he replied, “It’s okay.”
I never sped away from anywhere so fast.
I got permission from a lovely German woman working at an Avis desk at Schönefeld airport to leave the car for two weeks until I returned from Poland. She even drove me across the street to the train station at which I purchased a ticket to Warsaw.
The next day, sitting in my relatives’ living room in a little town outside Warsaw, retelling this story, my uncle grumbled, “Thirty years ago they’d have shot you.”