Border

Polish-Ukrainian border in Medyka

I've crossed borders between countries many times. I remember when we had to spend one hour on Polish-German border in Słubice just go get a stamp in our passports. I remember detailed control on French-Swiss border (they saw Polish passports for the first time in their lives). I know how people from borderland earn one's living. But last Thursday on Polish-Ukrainian boder in Medyka-Szeginie I saw things I've never seen before. And I don't want to see anymore. What is rather impossible, because in December I have to go cross it again.

We got to Lviv at noon, after 22 hours on a train. Meanwhile I learned that "train" in Russian is поезд, which is similar to Polish "pojazd" and means "vehicle". So I thought Magda doesn't remember the "train" word and use universal "vehicle" all the time. We got to border on marshrutka, very kind man showed us where is the pedestrian border crossing. After short Ukrainian control ("What were you doing in Ukraine?" "For which organization did you work?") we saw a kilometre-long queue to Polish border. A little bit disappointed we joined the queue and started to call our families and friends. But one kind Ukrainian woman told us we don't have to stay here, Polish side should let us enter earlier, because we are travelers. Ok, let's try. Officer wasn't nice and told us to go back to the queue, but to the first group. We saved at least 3 hours and managed to cross the border in an hour.

What did we see first on Polish side? Biedronka!* But they don't accept credit cards there and I had only 5 PLN in my wallet... There's no ATM around, but in the "centre" of Medyka there is a shop where I can pay by card. Great. Let's find this... centre. Do villages have centres? We did the shopping: Polish vodka for Piotrek, Polish beer for Dawid, Nutella for us. After quick coffee to warm us up we decided to go back. We were in good mood because one hour earlier there was no queue at all.

But there was. Long one. I don't think it should be called a queue. Rather wild crowd yelling, trampling on others, thinking only about getting to the border, not about other people's lifes and health. They even smashed the door for handicapped people to get inside. All of them had big trolleys and bags full of clothes, shoes and electronic devices bought in Polish shops.

I don't know how much time I spent to get to the passport control. Whole that part of a trip is getting fuzzy in my mind, probably because I want to forget about it. Some guys wanted to fight with me, someone was trying to crush my leg with a trolley, someone tried to break my arm. It was difficult to breath, I had no chance to move and I just wanted to survive. When we finally crossed the border we were shivering for an hour. I had terrible pain in my muscles for a couple of days.

Control itself lasted around 15 seconds. On Ukrainian border 30 seconds. No problem at all.

But I've never been so scared.

And I have to do the same in December.

*popular cheap shop