I mean, I'd driven across America east-to-west twice, and north-to-south a few times, and all kinds of places in between... and I'd flown to a variety of other countries, but I'd never driven into Canada or Mexico (never lived anywhere near either border) and so had never crossed a national border by car.
So then I was going into a certain southern African country that I shall not name, from a different African country, and I didn't know how to do it. I guess if I'd thought about it, I would have realized that I needed to go to passport control on both sides of the border, just like you have to exit through passport control at one airport and enter through it at another airport. But I wasn't really thinking about it, and I went to passport control to get my exit stamp, and then drove to the other side, and just kept on driving -- there were no signs indicating that I should stop, and the guy on the other side didn't even ask for my passport, he just waved me through. And it wasn't till a few days later, when I tried to leave, that a guard a different border post asked for where my entry stamp was so she could stamp the exit stamp across it, which was required. And I didn't have one. And it took a lot of cajoling and begging and pleading (but somewhat surprisingly, not a hint of a bribe or even a request for one) to convince her that it was a genuine (if very stupid) mistake and I would never do it again. (This was pre-9/11, and I suspect that as notoriously bad as U.S. immigration controls have become since then, she might today be less inclined to grant me any slack. Which would, honestly, be entirely her right. I still can't believe I got away with it.)
The irony being that I'd been through more than one checkpoint at which my passport had been demanded and inspected, but apparently not really inspected, and in one case the policeman was too busy hitting on me and trying to arrange to marry my sister to notice that I had no stamps.
Sibling-marriage-offers aside, having a passport that is totally crammed with stamps from all over is a nice deterrent to having it too closely inspected -- I also got into Iraq one without a proper visa and was afraid they'd arrest me on the way out, but the guy didn't even notice. (Which is actually how I got in without a visa in the first place.)
Since then, I've crossed lots of borders in the Middle East and Africa, and just about every one of them (except a few very remote crossings) have been nightmarish with the long lines (or chaotic mob-scenes-instead-of-lines) and ridiculous delays and cars stacked up on top of each other and visas being questioned and cars being searched, and occasional bottles of whiskey or packs of cigarettes or just plain money changing hands to facilitate the process. The only orderly one I can recall was in Botswana, where everything is orderly.
But I still have never driven across a border in Europe, or in North America, for that matter. I have nothing to compare it to.
As much as I dread the border hassles, I do mourn the death of the passport stamp. I love new passport stamps. I covet new passport stamps. And it's sort of dispiriting to be traveling around in Europe and not get any new ones....
As to missing stamps, I did manage to get into Russia once without getting my passport stamped (I took the night train from Kiev to Moscow), but I did get the exit stamp without a problem. I also managed to take a Lebanese rental car into Syria, something that was apparently strictly forbidden, but which did happen (and that's when I discovered that there was no unleaded fuel in Syria -back in 1997 - so we had to limit our driving around; we ended up staying in Hama and rented Mercedes taxis for daytrips while we were there). But I do have a detailed stamp in the passpost wit hthe car registration number on it... btw Syria was the one place where the personality cult was creepier than anything I saw in the Soviet Union and Former Soviet Union. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
With all my Syrian and Saudi and Lebanese and whatever stamps now, I keep expecting the folks in the US to give me a hard time, but they've always actually been rather polite. I have trouble reconciling my experiences with everything else I hear.
I did get a right sound grilling at Heathrow last year, though.
probably cos they knew you were about to go drinking with a known subversive. keep to the Fen Causeway
:-) Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
