Travel Without Papers

// March 12th, 2010 // travel

What’s the single most important thing to bring with you when traveling – except your sense of humour and knowing where you’re going? Right, your passport or any other form of official identification. And that’s exactly what I forgot before going to Berlin to attend a pre-meeting for the 2010 edition of the European Hitchgathering.

I traveled in Europe without identification before and got held at the French-Spanish border for a little while (what do you mean “open borders”) while checking if my story was true (which apparantly wasn’t – but I got released anyhow). So I knew it could be done. But going to Germany is yet another challenge. The highways are full with German cops and they pull over anyone that looks suspicious. Not having your identity with you, is asking for to be taken in.

Traveling from The Netherlands makes you suspicious, for no other reason. Hence when my driver drove across the border, I was very unhappy to see dozens of police holding down all cars to search through. One officer was standing in front of us. A look into the car, a doubt of two seconds and we got cleared. Sigh, I took a deep breath. We could drive through and we laughed together – the price of the car, a German numberplate and the fact it had a very pretty female driver, might have helped.

But the danger wasn’t over yet. I got dropped off at a small parking-lot just before Osnabruck. It was cold and there were very few cars. After an hour a police car entered the parking and was driving slowly towards me, making me think fast of the story I would make up. Knowing that German police interrogate hitchhikers and check their papers quite often, I knew I was having a very good day as another driver opened its window just a couple of seconds later, offering me a 350 km ride. Thankfully I didn’t see more police after that (yet).