Random Travel and UK Customs

From Random Hipatia

In a few months I am going to visit Chicago to do something I have not done in a very long time; I have been invited to speak before an American audience. I have not even spoken before an audience who’s first language was English in over a year, and the last time I spoke in this country it was in D.C. two years back. A number of years ago, and this was when we still had a legally elected President, I had to be “smuggled” into the NSF (National Science Foundation) to speak because I was apparently so controversial that those who attended feared corporate retaliation. And that audience included people all the way up to an agency director. I suspect given the current administration, I would not be welcome in that venue today.

While I do sometimes have been invited to speak in the U.K., there are issues there as well. The U.K. is the only country in the world where I have ever been searched and detained om all my travels, even if it was only for 5 hours late on spring night in 2001, and it remains the only flight destination where I know I will be searched or otherwise delayed by their customs. While it is easy to imagine why I might not be all that welcome to speak before a U.S. government audience, I probably should explain more about my particular problem with the U.K.

My problems began that year (2001) when I was speaking at an event at Twenty University in Enscede (Netherlands, near the German border…) and met up with a few friends I know from the U.K. We choose to go to England late that afternoon, in part to miss London traffic. If anyone reading this knows London traffic and European geography, you will understand why this actually makes perfect and logical sense.

Driving across Netherlands and Belgium that night to Calais (to catch a late night chunnel train) was not in itself particularly eventful. This being border-free Western Europe, it was not much different from driving from Alabama to Mississippi, except that the roads were miserable in Belgium. Perhaps that’s their secret to stave off future invaders, who will get frustrated by Belgium potholes and choose to go home instead.

At the chunnel entrance we were stopped by British customs, where we experienced the first of a number of revealing problems. First there was the issue with the car registration. My friend from England borrowed it from a friend from his father’s mosque. The person the car was actually registered to was an Iraqi national.

My other friend had recently converted to Islam, an issue I would not have even thought about, though certainly the customs people did, and as he had just returned from his first Hajji, naturally he had Saudi currency with him. To round out our little group was a particularly versatile Dutch friend of mine who is even more traveled than me, with a passport that does actually read like the U.N. membership rolls. So, we were detained for 5 hours, searched and questioned, and finally allowed to enter glorious England, on an early morning chunnel train. As dawn broke over Dover, we were free, and reached London just on time for the start of morning traffic. As we were staying on the far north end of London, we got there another 6 hours later…

Ever since to this day I have yet to be hindered in any travel I do, except when I visit the U.K. I may be speaking in the U.K. again this summer, so I guess I may have to endure British customs once more. I have found I am less hassled if I fly into Schiphol and then take an easyjet flight over the channel than if I go direct from the U.S. to the U.K., although there is this one Dutch customs officer I sometimes encounter while transferring through Schiphol (In the past I often would go through Schiphol wherever I visit in Europe, though recently I have been given nice flights on Scandinavian Airlines through Copenhagen) who delays me a few minutes and always says he will not accept my passport the next time he sees me because of the condition it is in (its a bit travel-worn…). I haven’t figured that one out either.