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On Sunday afternoon I left Aachen and drove to Köln to visit Pierre and Wera. Everything was fine until suddenly a car looking like a police car pulled over in front of me and some lights started flashing askin me to pull over. I definitely wasn't speeding as there was no speed limit, the car is OK, so I was a bit astonished by this to say the least.
It turned out that it wasn't the police but customs and they wanted to know where I came from and whether I brought anything with me. Now, fact is, that Aachen is close to the Dutch border and it's OK to buy Marijuhana there. So there's some kind of tourism going on. But why the fuck did they pull me over? Had they done their spying homework correctly, they would've known that I didn't come from Holland, right?
And then they started asking those silly questions. Apparently I looked irritated by this - and I for sure was. They even asked why I am. Of course I told them that I was surprised to have customs stopping me right inside Germany when I haven't even left the country seems a bit strange to me. Still they wanted to search the car - obviously they didn't believe me.
There are several questions I start asking myself now: Firstly - if they don't believe me anyway, why do they bother asking? They could simply say: We can search your car and we feel like doing it. No matter what you say, it won't change our minds. That wouldn't be more rude but at least it would be honest. Secondly - although, when I asked them they of course denied this and claimed they picked random cars - it reinforces my suspicion that customs discriminate quite a bit, preferredly against young(ish) male people travelling on their own.
They also searched my luggage once at the airport when coming from the UK. (What the hell would anybody want to bring in from the UK? Everything that could be forbidden to import in great quantities is cheaper in Germany anyway.) Of course they didn't find anything in their search but my dirty underwear (perhaps customs people like digging through the dirty underwear of strangers - uh-oh, I don't really want to know).
So that's taxpayer's money at work, apparently. About five officials in a total of three cars wasting their and my time for no reason at all. I am annoyed. I thought they were tracking down serious smugglers, say who smuggle in millions of Euros worth in cigarettes without paying taxes, people who actually do damage to the country in that way. If somebody really wants to buy and use drugs, they'll do it anyway and the damage caused by it will be mainly their own and not to the whole country. So why care? Everybody seems to be agains a nanny state otherwise.
It makes certain Atari Teenage Riot or Slime song(title)s appealing in a way.