[PRCo] crossing the border

[Harold G.]

Greetings to Ed and Fred
About crossing the border.   Coming to the USA is no easy job.
I withhold any comments about recent changes,

When I first went to Canada as a high school student, I had no
drivers license or photo ID.  Took the overnight CP train from Boston
to Montreal.  I had no passport.  I took my birth certificate but
no one asked for it.

When I first went to Juarez Mexico from ElPaso, I took the PCC
across the bridge.  This was l960.  No problems or check in
People from Mexico had work permits or were shopping.  The
seats on the PCC were turned the long way so that you faced
the aisle

In l953 I used the Tunnel bus to Windsor from Detroit.  The first
of many visits.  Coming back you exited the bus and walked thru
an immigration building.

Boy has Washington changed all this.

Now go to Europe.   No passports or immigration within the
European community.  Free movement for free people.
Even before there was never anything too involved.  For a while
in the late l980's, France wanted a visa after some terror attacks.
Even then many local trips had no inspection.  You could take the
local EMU from Brussels to Lille with no checks.  Or walk over
the border from the end of the Geneva tram.   Or ride an international
bus across the 3 way border at Aachen, France and Belguim

Going into the east you needed a visa to go to Poland, Czekslovak,
Hungary or Romania.  I always went ti the enbassy in Wash DC.
But this is what I did when I went to Australia.  Nice people in the
embassy and at the border.  They all had relatives in the USA

East Germany and East Berlin was something else.  They ran a jail
for a nation.  They collected West German hard currency and gave
you worthless east money.  At the subway crossing in Berlin, 
they took your passport away and you sat sometimes as long as
an hour.  East Germany may have been worse than Russia.

But once you were in, I was never bothered riding trams or trains.
I used good sense about photo taking.  Now NY and NJ wants to
play police state about train photos.  Metra in Chicago says OK
for such photos.  Its the Police that are doing all this.in NY and NJ.

Small cities in Easr Germany often had few English speakers.
On a visit to the tram in Karl Marx City I encountered none.  So
we talked street car with lots of gestures.

I visited Romania on a trade mission but had no problem with
the officials.   On the way out on an overnight sleeper to Budapest, 
I counted 13 Romanians check every thing three times.  Then we
crossed into Hungary and one Hungarian Sgt did every thing.  He
spoke German, English,Russian as well as Romanian and Hungarian.
This was when both were still Communist.

The Romanians were proud of their transit work.  Very crowded and old
but trying.  The Romanian bus manufacturer actally was trying to
sell buses in the USA.   Two went to Nassau County  They made
their own subway cars..did not use the Russian car forced on
Budapest and Prague.  And the tramway actually built articulated
lrvs for Cairo to earn hard cash.  I operated this car on the streets
of Bucharest.  I checked closely to see if I was followed
in Bucharest.  I was not.  I rode all over town.

On recent visits to East Germany every thing is now normal German.

Interesting to note that none of the East German airline Interflug
merged with Luftshana.  No planes, no crews. no nothing.
Interflug formerly flew every where in the world.

But DB rail continued to use East crews.   In East Berlin, I only found one
East Berlin manager on the combined BVG.  He was a young guy
who ran the East Berlin subway shop.

Harold Geissenheimer