Trump talks a lot about building border walls. Europe got rid of most of the ones it once had, but with more homeless and desperate folk seeking refuge throughout the continent, I wondered if more barriers would be evident in the course of our current visit to France to Italy. The answer is…mixed.
To get to Italy last Friday, we rolled our carry-on bags down the hill from Olivia’s flat in the French Alps to the little bus station on the main road through her village. We caught the 8:58 a.m. bus bound for Oulx (across the border in Italy); we’d bought the tickets ($8.85 per person) when we’d arrived in town a few days earlier. The bus was clean and pleasant and not very full The ride took only 95 minutes, and the views out the windows entertained us the whole way. We climbed through the beautiful alpine valleys, often well above the clouds.
For a while, the road reversed itself, making one 180-degree turn after another.
I felt happy that I wasn’t powering myself upward like some of the warmly dressed cyclists we rumbled past.
Near a high point, we stopped at a small French town where a few of our fellow passengers disembarked, and a little ways down the road, we passed a wood and glass structure where Steve caught sight of a couple of French officials seated at desks. They didn’t glance at our bus. A minute or so later, I snapped a photo of a sign welcoming us to Italy. Steve also spotted a little shack that he thought might once have served as a border-crossing inspection station, but it was abandoned.
That was it. No one ever asked if we even were carrying passports. The bus reached our destination on time, we dashed across the tracks at the station and caught the train leaving for Turin. (Although we’d bought tickets for the one leaving an hour later, no one seemed to care that we’d jumped on the early train.) We pulled into the Turin station on a cool, sunny morning, and rest of the weekend was filled with one pleasure after another.
I might conclude that European border-crossing was still innocent and hassle-free. But the old American friend with whom we spent the weekend had a different experience on his journey. His supposedly “express” bus got to Geneva (where he lives) more than two hours late, filled with passengers who reported being subjected to sniffer-dog inspections at the Swiss border. Going from Switzerland to France, his bus stopped again for more dog sniffing, and crossing from France into Italy, everyone was required to hand over his or her passport. Those were not returned for about a half hour.
It all reminded me: when it comes to border-crossing, you can’t count on anything. You just have to feel grateful when you get lucky, as Steve and I did.
At home and abroad 