The Romanian Visa Paradox - VIII

PART VIII – The Harassment Instability

            After the consulate business I still had to wait until evening for the train back to Romania. I didn’t want to stray much in that seedy area of the city to I spent most of the time walking around the consulate area and the banks of the Danube.

            I boarded the train without incidents and in the same compartment was a Romanian girl. We started talking and she told me that her sister was married to a Hungarian man and had just given birth so she has spent the past three months helping her sister with the house chores. And in this period, she also went visit some friends in Amsterdam. 

            We crossed the border into Romania without incidents with the Hungarian immigration authorities.

            She was showing me her photo album with photos of her stay in Hungary and the trip to Holland when we stopped for the check by the Romanian immigration authorities.

            The officer checked my passport and my visa and stamped it without problems.

            When it was the girl’s turn however, the officer turned nasty. He checks her passport and sees that she’s been in Hungary for 3 months and start asking what was she doing there? Why did she have to come to Hungary? Why did she stay so long? Couldn’t her sister hire someone to help her? 

            He noticed the Dutch visa in her passport and started a new batch of questions: Why did she go to Holland? How long did she stay there? What were she doing there?

            Then he demands that she opens her luggage. As she does so he sees the photo album and asks her what is it. She says it’s just a photo album. He grabs it from inside her suitcase and starts flipping through the photos. I stand up and asked him if that was really necessary. He holds a hand up to me and tells me to stay out of it, with the typical Romanian “Aici eu sunt cel mai tare si mai mare” attitude.

            During her visit to Holland, the girl’s friends had taken her to visit the famous Amsterdam Sex Museum. While flipping through the album the bully sees a photo of a statue of a man with a huge erection taken at the museum and starts asking her: What is this? Is this what you went to Amsterdam for? Is this what you like?

            The SOB turned from harassment to abuse.

            Clearly the bully assumed that the girl could only be a prostitute and was trying to force her into admitting it. 

So that’s what is in his mind. If a Romanian woman goes abroad, the only possible reason is prostitution. 

And this was a Romanian border officer checking on a Romanian citizen!

I wonder if he has ever checked whether his mommy has been abroad.