When you think that the customs control you only at the border, well, you are wrong.
Victor was just “examined” by French customs, but not at the border itself, they stopped us 500 km inside France, near to Lyon. We only wanted to have a coffee at a gas station, but the planned “10 minute stop” changed to a “2 hour examined by the police stop”.
We drove onto the parking area and suddenly, without a warning, a policeman jumped out of his cover and blocked our way. “Very brave!”, I thought, “he can’t be sure our brakes are working well.”
NO PHOTO HERE! THE POLICE FORBID TO TAKE ANY!
“Oh shite, the police.”, Vil slows Victor down. The policeman pointed on a special place we should park. He reaches for his ‘special’ box, grabs the little piece of an ‘illegal substance’ he carries and puts it into his mouth.
“You bark nothing. When I stop Victor, I will open the door and you will jump out and distract the police a little bit.” We stop at the designated spot and Vil stops Victors engine. He opens the door and I jump out as I told. The police dog really likes me and tries to chase me.
Vil jumps out of the car, runs behind us onto the grass and while running he spits the little piece of ‘illegal’ substances he carries, on the ground. “Brown and brown, that should work.” He secures my leash and walks calmly back to the police man who is looking a bit amused, because the enjoyed watching the chase.
Vil was asked if he carries any “illegal” substances. He answered, “No! Surely not!”, but the police didn’t trust him. They start to examine Victor and by examining I mean “totally remove” all stuff from the inside.
I needed to stay with Vil, while the customs officers remove all stuff from the inside, including my food and sleeping place. Not good.
And if this is not enough, they send another dog inside Victor to sniff him everywhere. That is not possible and I barked: “Go away, Victor is my friend!”
They find Vil’s secret stash box, which still smells like a garden. “Smells nice!”, said the police man with a smile. “And where is the rest?” He looks at Vil and waits for an answer. “I already told you that I carry nothing with me. I was last week in Amsterdam and I smoked inside the car while being there.” Now the police men is encouraged to look even more in detail and they start to rip Victor apart. They open every part, remove everything inside and even look in the tank with a long tube, but they find nothing.
After they finished “violating” Victor, the story is not finished. Now they want to examine Vil to the closest and take him to a police van. There he needed to strip naked and show that he carries nothing on his body. When he came back, Vil looked a bit “unpleasant” but smiling. 🙂
I asked Vil: “Did they find anything? I smelled the nice smoking ingredient all the time.” He answered with a smile. “Naaa, don’t worry. They found nothing and they will find nothing!” I don’t understand. “So how you fooled the Police?” Vil replies with a smile. “Naaaa, do you think I am stupid? I won’t tell you anything. You write everything on your BLOG and I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t comment any allegations that I carry illegal substances with me.”
One policeman approaches Vil and talks to him: “Sir, we are finished, You can go now! Have a nice day!” A nice day? Now we need to put all our stuff back into Vil and that is plenty of work. Thank you.
The police pack their stuff, get in their cars, drive away and now it’s on Vil to reassemble Victor and repack all our stuff. He is a bit annoyed about the while situation and after he finished I thought we are ready to go, but he starts to search on the ground. “What are you looking for?”, I barked. “Wait I need to concentrate. Maybe this is the best day in or life or the worst. I spat the piece somewhere here and now I am looking for it. Maybe you help me with your super nose? Or better stay alert and check if the police comes back.”
He continues to search, it’s not easy to find something looking like a brown piece of dirt in a pile of brown dirt! He searches everywhere, near to give up and after more than half an hour I hear his shout: “YESSSSS, I found it! Now a coffee and a smoke!” Maybe next time I should offer Vil to carry his stuff for him because they didn’t check me at all.
Vil walks for a coffee and when we got back on the highway we passed the police again which erected a new control point a few kilometers down the road. “Arrrghhhhh, no again…. and the smoke is still burning.”, buthe was lucky. One of the policemen recognized us and waved us to pass.
Whiff!
