Szczecin; Tuesday, 24 July, 2012

I had a leisurely breakfast, popped over to the tourist office to pick up some postcards and send them off and then it was time to check out and head down to the station.

In contrast to Polish railways, the train, run by Deutsche Bahn, was on time to the second (though from experience this is becoming a rare thing for DB). And so at precisely 10:57 we pulled out of the station and I headed towards the German border.

I had assumed that as Poland was in Schengen it would be a smooth ride into Germany, and initially it was, but two stops over the border a whole gaggle of Polizie got on the train and inspected everyone’s papers.

Needless to say, on a train travelling from Poland to Germany, discovery of a British passport caused quite a bit of interest (so much for trying to travel as a local). Firstly there was confusion as my passport is 8 years old and has the identity page in a different place to newer passports. Then there was confusion as my passport is so badly battered that the whole of the front emblem (UK coat of arms) has rubbed off so they thought it might be fake. Finally there was uproar as I had left the stub of a boarding card for a flight from Hamburg in middle of it – clear evidence that I was an enemy of the DDR, shame the DDR hasn’t existed for the last 20 odd years, but I think they may have reverted to original training.

Eventually, after a few minutes examining my passport, and me starting to consider how I phrase “I can’t make it into work today, I’m being held in a DDR gulag for espionage”, the police handed it back to me and walked on.

Cover blown I put my headphones on and sunk back into the seat to avoid being looked at as a weird foreigner and travelled deeper into Germany.