When I was working for HP, I was sent to Stuttgart, Germany on business twice. First time was for a month and second, for three months. On both these occasions, I wasted no weekend, and since I had a schengen Visa I traveled across Europe wherever possible.
On one of these occasions I went to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Now what happened there was exciting but that can be told on a later occasion. What I am going to describe now is what happened on my return back to Germany. This colleague of mine and I had travelled by train, met up with few other colleagues at Amsterdam, had a fun weekend and the two of us were returning back by train. The train reached Stuttgart by about 4.30 AM. It was biting cold outside.
We collected our bags and stepped out very groggily. Apart from us there was only one other guy who got off at Stuttgart. As soon as we got off we were swarmed by 4-5 hefty looking guys who started speaking in express fast German with us and showed us some ID as well. We told them we didnt know German and could they please speak in English.
We couldnt quite understand their English either. My colleague was totally clueless but I heard the word "Marijuana" . I could kind of understand that they were asking if we had marijuana or any drugs with us. I just told them "No". Then these guys asked us to hand over our bags for our inspection and also wanted to verify our passports. Dutifully but extremely scared, we did so. It made sense that this was happening because we had just come from Netherlands where drugs was legal and Germany did not want any illegal trafficking. But at 4.30 AM in the morning and in a Foreign land, we had no clue if this was official inspection or if these guys were out to rob us of our money and passports.
While a couple of them were looking at our bags, one guy held our passports. My colleague asked him if he could return them back. The guy said No and zipped it inside his jacket!! This was when I really panicked. I was trying to recollect the mobile number of the Financial controller of HP, Germany with whom we had been interacting at work. Just in case we were left stranded there..
Finally, having found no drugs in our bags they returned back both our bags and passports... whew! Sigh of relief! My colleague and I ran down to the local train station without a word. This incident really shook us both up! One thing I was extremely glad was that none of us bought the drug laced chewing gum which was sold in Amsterdam. Unlike real drugs they seemed innocent enough, however common sense prevailed due to a life time of listening to "Say No To Drugs" campaigns! Else God knows I'd have spent a day in a German jail..!!
On one of these occasions I went to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Now what happened there was exciting but that can be told on a later occasion. What I am going to describe now is what happened on my return back to Germany. This colleague of mine and I had travelled by train, met up with few other colleagues at Amsterdam, had a fun weekend and the two of us were returning back by train. The train reached Stuttgart by about 4.30 AM. It was biting cold outside.
We collected our bags and stepped out very groggily. Apart from us there was only one other guy who got off at Stuttgart. As soon as we got off we were swarmed by 4-5 hefty looking guys who started speaking in express fast German with us and showed us some ID as well. We told them we didnt know German and could they please speak in English.
We couldnt quite understand their English either. My colleague was totally clueless but I heard the word "Marijuana" . I could kind of understand that they were asking if we had marijuana or any drugs with us. I just told them "No". Then these guys asked us to hand over our bags for our inspection and also wanted to verify our passports. Dutifully but extremely scared, we did so. It made sense that this was happening because we had just come from Netherlands where drugs was legal and Germany did not want any illegal trafficking. But at 4.30 AM in the morning and in a Foreign land, we had no clue if this was official inspection or if these guys were out to rob us of our money and passports.
While a couple of them were looking at our bags, one guy held our passports. My colleague asked him if he could return them back. The guy said No and zipped it inside his jacket!! This was when I really panicked. I was trying to recollect the mobile number of the Financial controller of HP, Germany with whom we had been interacting at work. Just in case we were left stranded there..
Finally, having found no drugs in our bags they returned back both our bags and passports... whew! Sigh of relief! My colleague and I ran down to the local train station without a word. This incident really shook us both up! One thing I was extremely glad was that none of us bought the drug laced chewing gum which was sold in Amsterdam. Unlike real drugs they seemed innocent enough, however common sense prevailed due to a life time of listening to "Say No To Drugs" campaigns! Else God knows I'd have spent a day in a German jail..!!
3 comments:
An experience to last a lifetime!
Truly!! :-) and thanks for reading my post deepa
Whoa, quite an eye opener incident.. Lesson learnt :)
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