InsideOut Travel—Krakow-Berlin Cont.

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He smiled slightly and asked me where I'd learned Polish, where I was from and what I was doing in Wroclaw. He introduced himself as Andrzej, an electrician, and told me he was going to Berlin.

We were getting along famously as we got to the ticket window. By the time we got our tickets we were best friends, especially since he discovered he was short the train fare and I gave him the necessary 10 zloty, about $2.50 USD.

Walking to the platform, he let me in on a pair of secrets. He said he was combining business and pleasure by visiting friends and smuggling in six cartons of cigarettes. He also said he was carrying a large bottle of vodka and that we were going to drink the whole thing.

The first bit of news didn't surprise me. Half a century of communism and empty shelves in Poland had created a smuggler's culture that has survived more than a decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Many Poles still turn vacations abroad into ways to make a buck, sneaking cheap Polish products out of Poland and smuggling in anything that could earn them a couple of dollars.

On a bus from Wroclaw to Paris, I met a man who smuggled art and antiques out of France into a friend's Warsaw gallery.

A nice old woman on a bus from Kiev kindly asked me and everyone else to carry one carton of her stash of Marlboros—the legal limit for taking across borders, as we crossed from Ukraine into Poland.

Smuggling back cheap alcohol from the Czech Republic is also a Polish national sport. According to an article at www.mw.nl by Thijs Papot, “Around 10,000 packets of cigarettes are confiscated [in Medyka, Poland] every day. The expectations are that this amount will only rise as Poland introduces EU taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, meaning the price-difference will double."

Andrzej visited his Berlin friends often and he never failed to bring some cheap cigarettes to sell.

His second bit of news about the vodka surprised me even less, though it worried me a lot more. Our six-person compartment had only two other passengers, a student named Marek and an elderly woman. Marek joined us for vodka shots, which we drank out of a common plastic cup.

The woman declined to join us, but graciously thanked us each time we drank to her health. The first shot of vodka is always a bit harsh for my taste, deforming my face like the cartoon character Calvin whenever his mom forced him to eat spinach.

Andrzej saw this and scoffed, "Don't know how to drink, eh Amerikanin?"

As the trip wore on and the vodka began taking effect, it went down much smoother. I matched Andrzej's drinking and his obnoxiousness, calling him Polak every time he called me Amerikanin.

Soon, we were approaching Rzepin, the last stop on the Polish side before the German border town Frankfurt an der Oder.

Andrzej had confided in our compartment mates about his contraband and we were all trying to find a way to best hide it. He gave me one of the cartons, assuring me I was able to bring that much into Germany legally.

I even took another one, knowing that American passport holders were less likely to have their backpacks searched than Poles. Unfortunately, Marek couldn't help Andrzej as he was already bringing a carton of Lucky Strikes.

The woman was getting off the train in Rzepin but she showed Andrzej how to hide the cartons under the seats in such a way that the customs inspectors wouldn't notice a telltale bulge. I couldn't help smiling as I tried to imagine one of my grandmothers advising someone how to smuggle Tequila out of Mexico or prescription drugs out of Canada.

We entered Germany without any trouble and Andrzej's success inspired him to double his drinking efforts. The hour ride between Frankfurt and Berlin was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

Andrzej was passed out when we reached Berlin's eastern suburbs and Marek and I wondered what to do about him, though both of us were too addled to come up with any great ideas.

We managed to roust him once we pulled into the station but only so that he could stagger off the train, deaf to our reminders that he'd left five of his six cartons behind.

Marek suggested we split the loot, but I didn't smoke and didn't feel like trying to sell them.

Still, as Marek collected the hidden cartons, he insisted on giving me a symbolic 5 euros for "my" three cartons. I accepted, which I guess officially makes me a smuggler—though a pretty bad one.

As I rode the subway out of the station, I regretted not having asked for at least 20 euros.

That was stupid of me, I thought but then I pictured Andrzej, stumbling around Berlin somewhere and took comfort knowing that I wasn't the world's worst smuggler.

Matt Dueholm was a teacher, translator and vagabond for seven years in Romania, Poland, Germany and France. He has settled down near Minneapolis with his Polish wife and their 3-year-old son. Matt continues to teach English as a foreign language, and runs a small jewelry business with his wife.

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CONTINUED KRAKOW-BERLIN

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