Baltic paperwork

[johnalison]

This won't be a lot of help to those going this year, but a funny thing happened to us a few years ago, in 2011. In those days some of the former East Bloc countries were still in bureaucratic mode, including what had been the DDR. We were just leaving Swinoujscie setting off for home and on a quiet day had got our sails up before leaving the marina. I motored out into the river heading inland (which people who know it will understand) when I saw an official-looking man waving at me. Since he had a gun I thought it would be politic to stop, so I pootled over towards him and he was waving us back into the marina. So, down came the sails and we tied up near his office while my wife did her bit by muttering a lot.

I accompanied the gentleman into his office. He was quite friendly but spoke no English, so we communicated using both my words of German and some gestures. I was surprised when he dug out a file dedicated to our boat; we had been occasional visitors over seven years. When he had satisfied himself about my papers he then did something that I have been chuckling about ever since: he extracted from my file a piece of paper shown below. It is a transit pass issued to us in Wismar some hundreds of miles away - the previous year.

 

[rotrax]

I know EXACTLY where you are coming from here, having travelled most Iron Curtain countries regularly since 1970.

Just after the wall came down, but well before unification, I got a Grass Track and Speedway rider into the DDR with an out of date passport. We were going to strut our stuff on the Bergring at Teterow and the Speedway at Gustrow.

To cut a long story short it came down to :-

" Haben sie Deuchmarks from Bundesrepublic? "

" Ja! "

" Alle ist gutte! Kommen sie, Kommen sie! "

I could not have imagined that happening the previous year!

 

[Joker]

I travelled from Swinoujscie down into the Stettiner Haff intending to cross over into Germany. This was in 2006. In those days there was a guard boat at the border [the Haff is a semi inland lake about 20 miles across]. He hailed me, and as I came up, asked if I had 'port inspection'? Er ... no. He got very agitated and jumped into a RIB. 'Follow me', and I was led into some very shallow lagoons. When I tied up, he came on board with his papers and proceeded to ask me question after question - one of which was 'What is your Father's given name?'
At the end of all this, he wagged his finger at me and told me I should be a lot more careful crossing borders.

 

[johnalison]

I travelled from Swinoujscie down into the Stettiner Haff intending to cross over into Germany. This was in 2006. In those days there was a guard boat at the border [the Haff is a semi inland lake about 20 miles across]. He hailed me, and as I came up, asked if I had 'port inspection'? Er ... no. He got very agitated and jumped into a RIB. 'Follow me', and I was led into some very shallow lagoons. When I tied up, he came on board with his papers and proceeded to ask me question after question - one of which was 'What is your Father's given name?'
At the end of all this, he wagged his finger at me and told me I should be a lot more careful crossing borders.

We first did Poland in 2004, when it was a matter of checking in and out at every port. I think we had to in '06 too. Checking in meant tying up to a concrete jetty at each port near the office with a Polish flag, which was invariably near the harbour entrance, open to the swell of the sea and vessels coming to and fro. Great fun.

 

[Dockhead]

This won't be a lot of help to those going this year, but a funny thing happened to us a few years ago, in 2011. In those days some of the former East Bloc countries were still in bureaucratic mode, including what had been the DDR. We were just leaving Swinoujscie setting off for home and on a quiet day had got our sails up before leaving the marina. I motored out into the river heading inland (which people who know it will understand) when I saw an official-looking man waving at me. Since he had a gun I thought it would be politic to stop, so I pootled over towards him and he was waving us back into the marina. So, down came the sails and we tied up near his office while my wife did her bit by muttering a lot.

I accompanied the gentleman into his office. He was quite friendly but spoke no English, so we communicated using both my words of German and some gestures. I was surprised when he dug out a file dedicated to our boat; we had been occasional visitors over seven years. When he had satisfied himself about my papers he then did something that I have been chuckling about ever since: he extracted from my file a piece of paper shown below. It is a transit pass issued to us in Wismar some hundreds of miles away - the previous year.

I don't understand the point of this story at all. Everything was OK, and he showed it to your for amusement? Or to show you that they have eyes and ears everywhere? Or was there some problem?


I spent four summers in the Baltic, and got a lot of unwanted attention from the Germans, more than anywhere else. And I speak fluent German and know the country. Very often boarded and papers checked, and once -- the only time this has ever happened to me -- one of them tried to add up my Schengen days from the millions of stamps in my passport (I am not an EU citizen). One of them was subtly threatening and asked hundreds of questions designed to get us to spill something incriminating. And in the Kiel Canal, got actually fined for violating a signal we didn't understand, just because we were the only vessel transmitting AIS out of the group of us traveling together after going through the same lock (and all of us made the same violation).

They remind me a bit of the hated "water cops" in the U.S. and make me nervous. For all the thousands of miles I've sailed through Swedish and Danish waters, I've never seen a Swedish or Danish coast guard under way. Russians always very friendly, and never boarded in Russian waters for no reason. Been boarded a couple of times by the Finns and Dutch, but these are always jolly. The Germans give me the creeps. And they seem to have a huge amount of LEO assets in their waters -- I wonder why.

 

[johnalison]

The point of my tale was merely that I thought it rather amusing that a piece of paper issued at the dockside one year should turn up in a file dedicated to my yacht, a year later. This suggested a level of supervision that I hadn't anticipated. Having visited the Baltic one and off for nearly thirty years, I have never had any kind of problem with officialdom, except on one occasion for straying into a firing zone and on another for not displaying a cone. My last encounter at sea was with a German policeman who was puzzled that I wasn't displaying a white ensign. Like you, I have found the Danes and Swedes remarkable for their absence, but things have changed a lot in the last ten years and East Germany and Poland, which were always welcoming at the harbour level, are very straightforward.