Boredom

Boredom

Pavel Dutkow was bored, they had recently’restructured’ his rota which meant that he now had to work for fifty five hours a week instead of the previous fifty. Strangely enough, his wages were unaffected,

 “So this capitalism” he thought.

He had also recently been drafted to this crossing from his previous station further south at the other bridge over the Őder.

‘Was he border here at this border than at the other border,’  he wondered?

He stood  here on the Polish side of the bridge over the brown watered Őder river that formed the Grenz between Poland and Germany for fifty five hours each week, carrying a rifle that he had never used and still wasn’t sure how to, checking passports and asking silly questions in his ill fitting, baggy, army uniform.

’ How long are you staying in Poland,’ ‘Are you here for business or pleasure?’ and getting equally silly answers from his countrymen returning home after a profitable smuggling trip to the consumer paradise that is Germany. Their pockets were full of deutchmarks ready to be converted to Złotych by the black market traders waiting in the underground shopping tunels beneath Warsaw at a rip off exchange rate that the smugglers couldn’t do anything about because of the impossibiliy of legally exchanging large quantities of  hard currencies.

Two things interested him and helped the long shifts pass, one was watching the never ending procession of crashed Mercedes on the backs of everything from massive transporters to scrap looking flatbeds with just one Merc strapped down on its back. He had heard from his colleagues that there was a special lane on the aoutobahn from Germany with the queue up to two kilometres long at times to cross the border. These were all destined for the ‘chop and weld’ shops in Poland where they would be rebuild to varying standards – anything with a Mercedes badge on it was in great demand by people used to driving Trabants or, if they were very lucky and knew some civil servant to bribe, a Skoda. All the government officials, of course, drove the Polski Fiats or one of the coverted Mercs if they were in a high enough grade.

His work place was like a scene from Mad Max. It was a confusion of mud and shipping containers which were pressed into service for everything from the main border control offices, toilets, shops and a profusion of  “not sure whats”. There were several lanes to the control points but no one seemed to know which were for freight or cars so there were limitless traffic jams, confusion and indeterminable waits. It was a major culture shock after leaving the steely Teutonic efficiency of Germany.

His other interest was dealing with the foreigners who were coming to Poland for the first time. They were mainly contractors working for the companies that were selling hard into the old Eastern block now that the markets were opening up, funded by subsidies from Germany.. The best were the English who had to cope with the driving on the wrong side of the car – and the road. They never knew any Polish and Pavel no English so it was usually a pantomime of gestures and grins to get the formalities completed. The best fun to be had was those who had spent half an hour with a phrase book and came out with the standard Dzień dobry and Jak się pan miewa as they arrived. Pavel would answer them with a stream of Polish and take great delight in their baffled expressions. He usually took pity on them and called over his mate Marian who could speak a little English.

After their passports had been checked they were free to drive off  into misty, marshy borderlands of Polska.

Pavel was back to the boredom of his never ending shift.