Re: Schengen sucks and everyone is looking the other way
I haven't been stopped or searched anywhere either. I must look inoffensive and white enough, and don't wear a beard you can hide a chicken in. The white bit can be disturbingly important. I remember travelling back from a conference in Istanbul with a Ugandan PhD student. We both had only carry-on luggage, and I noticed we would land on Schiphol airport early, so we might be able to catch an earlier train, but my student was rather pessimistic about our chances, given that he always had to open EVERYTHING and have everything inspected closely by the customs officers, despite having all valid paperwork (passport, residence permit). He was also the nicest, most inoffensive, and good-natured person you could ever meet. He was, however, in possession of just about the darkest skin you could have.
I suggested he walked just about half a step behind and to the left of me, and kept his mouth shut, as we passed the "nothing to declare" customs gate. I strolled past with an "I-am-far-to-important-to-be-stopped" air worthy of Moist von Lipwig, which meant the officer duly ignored me. He was about to stop my student, when I turned round and said "He's with me" fairly sharply, whereupon the officer duly waved him through. This sudden change had an element of "if the black boy is with the white massa it's OK" to it that I found disturbing, but I decided not to raise that issue.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
