An Even Longer Wait
Place: Ukraine-Poland Border, Poland
Another overnight bus between Krakow and Lviv, just with opposite direction.
However, how could I imagine that it would take me 8 hours just to cross the border? I have traveled across the border between US and Canada and it is usually not very pleasant. Though mostly I have no problems to get into the US, some fellow passengers on my bus sometimes were grilled for more than 20 minutes. Thus, sometimes, it took as long as an hour for everyone on the bus to pass the custom and ready to go. It is sometimes quite unpleasant to travel across the land border from Canada to US.
However, this experience traveling from Ukraine to Poland surpassed all other unpleasant experience.
Exiting Ukraine shouldn't be that difficult but it took 2 hours. Some people had to fill some forms (look like a very long form) if they brought artwork out of the country. People also cannot bring too much money out of Ukraine (though I'm not sure what is the limit). But then, it shouldn't take 2 hours to process these forms and registration (there were only 2 people in our bus needs to fill out that form).
Then, getting into Poland is much worse. The lines towards the Polish custom was so slow that even a glacier may move faster. Overall, it took 6 hours to get into Poland. They checked every vehicle in such detail. It was lucky we were on a bus (so didn't need to drive). However, we did not really have a good sleep on that bus either.
I know now Poland is in E.U. and they hope to become part of Schengen District. Since now they are "the East Front" of the E.U., they have responsibility to guard the border, to prevent any unsavory people or things (drugs, weapons) flowing into the E.U land from their east neighbors. But, can they learn some efficiency management from their western neighbor?
Getting into Poland, another unfortunate day was in front of me.
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