By now we really felt an urge to get back to Häverstädt again. It is hard to describe but in the weeks which led up to our return we had really warmed with the idea of ‘getting there’, seeing family and friends and starting the next bit of our lives. We were highly motivated and we started calculations as to when, if all continued to go well, we would be in Germany and where we would have our last sleep. We arrived at the border rather soon and again were lucky because in contrast to the trucks, cars were handled rather quickly. We were confident to be in good old EU soon, but how wrong were we!
Well, to say the most important bit first: We made it through. But for a few hours it did not look like it. When we were at the gate it turned out that Holger & Sandra were more than welcome to go through but that this was a different story for Melville because he was a non-European citizen. First they sent us from the ‘nothing to declare’ section to the ‘something to declare’ section. And it became very soon clear that the officials had no clue what to do with us but felt they should do something… The difficulties started with the fact that we had to officially import the car into the EU which we had planned to do once we were back in Germany as this would be the new country of residence for troopy. To us it seemed to make sense as we are German citizens. From what we had read this meant that once back in Germany we would go to the nearest customs office with our paperwork and declare troopy (including paying for road taxes). Simply driving through Poland therefore couldn’t be such an issue in our eyes and should at the most involve announcing the arrival of the car to German customs. This was also what the first Polish border guard had told us.
However, for some reason the border guards became increasingly unsure what to do with us and then decided that we would have to pay a bond in form of a Carnet de Passage and once back in Germany would get the money back. This was not a fee paid to the Polish government but to a private insurance company situated at the border which sells you a certificate where they vouch for you that you will not sell your vehicle while crossing a country. We found this all very weird but followed the young guy who was sort of responsible for our case to the office. It is probably not difficult to imagine that we lost countenance considerably when a rather indifferent lady told us that this would be 5000USD in cash, thank you. No they would not take credit cards and the next teller was in the border-town 20ks away, easily reachable with a cab… Despite the unsurprising fact that we of course did not have said amount handy we were outraged as to why all of this was necessary. Whoever has laid their eyes on troopy knows that yes, he is a strikingly good looking car and yes, his worth for us is rather immeasurable, but no, in plain money he is not worth 5000USD – and why would somebody in POLAND of all places be interested in buying him!?!
We spent a ‘fun’ afternoon in the border office, talking to different officials, persuading them that it was rather idiotic to ship a car worth 5000AUD for 4000AUD to Russia, drive it for several thousand Ks (not to mention several thousand dollars worth of petrol) through Russia and Mongolia to sell it in Poland while we are on our way to Germany… Until finally after about 2 hours of unnerving hanging out and lamenting, a lady-officer who spoke really good English listened again to our story, translated it to some higher ranking guys who after a discussion, that felt like the 123rd that afternoon, decided that we had two choices: Either pay the bond or simply drive away. Aha. Their rather lame argument in favor of option a was that we might have difficulties with the German customs if we just drove off but how the bond was connected to this they could not really explain… hence we drove off, relieved and pumped with adrenalin. After all the places we had been through getting into Poland turned out to be the biggest issue – who would have thought that!
We drove deep into the night to make some mileage and stopped at a really nice hotel which had a room available. We had to revive our Frensch because the staff spoke Polish and French but no English :o) Finding a bed turned out to be difficult because it was a Saturday and most hotels we stopped were fully booked because of weddings taking place. The Polish roads were absolutely fantastic, road-signs told you the outside temperature, the street-temperature and we saw soooo many shiny new cars. Everything was clean and neat and the streets were lined with Carrefours, Mediamarkt and Lidl, Penny etc.
We were back in Europe! Now nothing could stop us and when we really made great progress thanks to German and Polish Autobahnen on Sunday we decided to arrive a day early.
The last K’s were weird and we talked about how the adventure was coming to an end but also about the new things awaiting us, it was very exciting!!! We arrived at around 10pm, and in Minden our families had prepared a spontaneous welcome (my branch had just returned from a holiday the same night). It was so great to meet them all again, it was a cheerful occasion and we had some champagne and exchanged a zillion hugs :o)
Wow sounds great. josh.
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