A friend of mine was boarding an intercity train from Munich to Stuttgart and was making her way to her seat when she overheard something familiar. She overheard someone speaking what sounded like Russian on the telephone. He was also looking for a place to sit down and so she assisted him as best she could. It was not actually Russian but most likely Ukrainian.
This guy must have been pretty lucky as she managed to find him a seat just near her. She was not especially interested in his travels but as she is a kindly person she did listen to him and found out that he had traveled from Greece, to Venice Italy, to Munich and was going to visit his friend in Stuttgart.
Eventually she managed to extricate herself from that conversation and managed to do a bit of reading. A short time later a trio of plainclothes policemen walked through the car, not speaking with anyone until they found this “Greek” businessman.
The policeman tried to speak with him but it turned out that he couldn’t speak German or English. The English was not so important as the policeman also did not speak very good English. It was at this time our heroine decided to ask the police if they wanted her to translate for them. Their first question was actually directed to her and asked if she was a friend of his.
She explained the situation and showed them her train ticket. The nice young policeman said that he was not responsible for tickets and she would need to show that the to train conductor. She also asked if they wish to look at her documents – she was quite proud of the fact that she had managed to navigate through both the German and Uzbekistan bureaucratic mazes to get them updated just a few months back.
No, the police did not have any interest in her documents but they did wish to look at the businessman’s passport. She did pass this information on to the businessman who did produce a Lithuanian passport. One of the policemen called headquarters to check out this document with a colleague and while that was happening the police wanted to have a quick check through his luggage.
The businessman pointed to his three suitcases and they were searched and besides the underwear, socks and other clothing were found two interesting items. The first was a small transparent plastic case about the size of a SD card with some sort of blue ink or powder inside. This was explained as probably clothing color or something similar.
The second item was about the size of a 6” subway sandwich. It was a transparent bag containing what looked to be a white powder. The police did of course ask “what exactly do you have in this package?” and the response was as silly as the question was obvious. The answer was that “this was sugar”. The police didn’t stick his finger in and taste it but did a quick sniff test and did not think that this was sugar. My friend also did not think this was sugar as it appeared to have the wrong consistency, which was more like flour.
Natasha He says this is a bag of sugar
Police Do you really believe that this a big bag of sugar?
Businessman Yes
Actually, about this time the train started to brake very suddenly. The conductor announced that due to an accident on the tracks that there would be a small delay. This was too much, my friend who felt like she was at a crime scene started to get a bit worried. One of the policeman suggested that she should calm down that everything will be OK. A few minutes later, it was announced over the loudspeaker that the delay was due to a wild boar on the tracks.
Oddly enough none of the police were especially excited about the items which were found in the businessman’s luggage but it was about this time that the third policeman got off his mobile phone. He came back with the knowledge that the name on this particular passport did not match the number of the passport. It seems that that passport number was reported stolen in 2005, which by an odd coincidence, was the issue date on this passport.
The businessman said that he simply received this passport from the police. After all that had transpired this did not ring true. The policeman suggested that this “small passport” issue does need to be checked out and they wanted to stop by the police station in Ulm. They suggested that as this is probably a small clerical error and this should only take about an hour to clear up.
The businessman did say that he really did not want to go to Ulm as he was being met by a friend in Stuttgart. My friend did suggest to the businessman that if the police wanted to have a visit with him at the police station then this was something that he should not resist. As the four men were getting ready to depart my friend did make once final bit of advice to the businessman. She did suggest that if indeed there was anything wrong with his passport that should expect to be at the police station for longer than one hour.