Cigarettes and marihuana

He looked at my ID card suspiciously. He roughly fumbled in his bag and took out a booklet, quickly flipped through the pages and held it in front of my face for me to read. It was in Dutch, and explained the purpose of this mysterious man and his two chaperoning colleagues.

They had boarded the train just after a city called Thionville, which is the first stop in France and around half an hour or so from Luxembourg. In slick black suits and meticulously pressed white shirts, they looked like secret agents of the CIA. For a while they loitered around the doorway and didn’t enter until the doors closed and train started to pick up speed.

One guy approached me and quickly flashed a badge in front of me, and before I realised what he wanted, he asked for my ID card. Peculiar, I thought to myself, because less than an hour ago some French border police had boarded the train and checked everyone’s ID already. He began to bombard me with questions:

‘Where are you going? For how long? Where are you staying?’
‘Do you have money with you? How much?’
‘Do you have cigarettes?’

It was the routine kind of questions you’d expect from any customs officer. But then came the thing that surprised me most, most likely because it was due to the fact I was coming from the Netherlands.

‘Do you have any drugs? Marihuana?’

I thought back to my experience not so long ago. Straight faced I answered ‘no’ straight away, while deep inside I thought to myself whether anything I was wearing gave the impression that I’m supposed to be a junky of some sort. He didn’t seem impressed with my answer, and went on:

‘Can I look in your bag?

I couldn’t say no, so handed him my backpack. He searched trough it, taking out the plastic bottle of water, a half-eaten sandwich, scrutinised my magazine, paper and pens, and finally set his eyes on two nicely wrapped presents that were intended for my friend and the baby. A bundle of fragile crystal tulips was wrapped carefully with newspaper and bubble paper, while the baby toy had a big sticker and ribbons on it with ‘Prenatal’ written all over it. Without saying anything else, he tore open the wrapping paper and took a long peek inside, poking, fingering and smirking.

When he was finally satisfied, he shoved the whole thing back to me, and smiled for the first time. ‘Have a nice day’.

I felt violated, accused and scrutinised for no good reason, and I wasn’t the only one. I’ve been to France on the same route five times in the last year, but never once have I been checked as stringently as this.

But then again, then the President was someone else.