right around midnight when the day was shifting from the 7th to the 8th of december local time, i was standing on the border leaving croatia trying to enter bosnia-herzegovina. it was a cold 2 degree winter night, all around me was foggy, and i was the last one on the queue. it took a little too long for my passport to get stamped and returned. everyone else has already got back to the bus, the driver tried to calm me down with his broken english telling me that it's not unusual, they're just making some copies of my passport. i started to get really anxious when it took way longer than i expected and even the bus driver has decided to return to the bus leaving me worried that he'd leave me here out of nowhere because my passport was issued by some faraway country with not a really good reputation. when the official finally showed up i was sort of hoping that he would greet me happy birthday while handing me my passport so it would make a perfect story for me spending my minutes of turning in to the last year of the 20s having difficulties on the border of an ex-conflicted country in an unknown town called gradiska.
it's always such a thrill getting passport stamped when i travel. in most european countries that i've been to, there are 3 kinds of stamp, each represented with different icons: by plane (which is the least exciting because you got stamped not on the border but at the airport), by train, and by car (this includes the bus).
the most confusing one for me was when i was crossing from spain (tarifa) to morocco (tangier) by a ferry. we have reached the land when they told us to get back to the ship, go up to the second floor, find a room, there they took our passport inside, asked us to wait outside, not knowing what's happening with our passport, while at the same time worrying that the ship might leave at any time. the coolest one has got to be the one on a train when i was on the border between slovenia and croatia. two officials in uniforms came in the coach carrying two big stamps as if they're carrying guns. they asked several simple questions before one of them stamped us out and the other one stamped us in. so fast, no fuzz, so cool. the one with the bus has several type of procedures. on the one between croatia and bosnia-herzegovina we have to step outside the bus and personally queue at the immigration control, while on the one between bosnia-herzegovina and serbia, an official got in the bus, collected all documents from the passengers, and then later the driver would return them all.
it was such an exciting part of a journey it make me kind of wish they would stamped us in and out on every single country within the schengen area, although it might not be the most practical thing to do.
