Blork have announced the November Monkey, called “Border Stumbles”. I can’t decide which story to offer, so I’ll do both:

1) After a very eventful trip to Norway one December (which is another long and intriguing story in itself) we ended up in Calais, France, catching a ferry to Dover, England. We’d spent the past 10 days eating, sleeping, and smoking illicit substances in my friend Philip’s Golf GTI, so the inside of the car had an interesting aroma, and the two of us looked quite unkempt. Of course, arriving in Dover the customs man signalled us to pull over. As soon as I wound down the window, his nose wrinkled. He asked us where we’d been, and I reeled off a list of countries and cities. As soon as I said Amsterdam, he said “step out of the car please”. Four customs officers ripped our car apart, including tearing into a petrol soaked fruit cake (don’t ask) they found in the back. They then took us to separate rooms, and strip-searched us, with not quite the full rubber glove treatment, but close enough. After finding nothing they begrudgingly let us go.

2) Jen and I were driving down to Vermont for the weekend, and because I’m not a Canadian citizen, we had to stop at the border for me to get a visa waiver. The first weird thing to happen was when the customs officer discovered I was British and asked “Oh, do you like fox hunting?” Well of course, every Brit keeps a pack of hounds handy in case there’s a fox to tear apart. The second annoyance was that they had started charging $6 for the visa waiver. Neither of us had cash, so I had to walk back to Canada to get some from the duty free shop. Nobody stopped me from doing that by the way. The final oddity was while waiting for the one-finger-typist officer to enter my details (into an Excel spreadsheet no less), I noticed a small piece of paper by the keyboard with a list of words on it. I’m pretty sure it was a list of the passwords for their computer system…