After a mad eleventh-hour cramming session, I sat for my final exam in statistics. I think the worst thing to possibly think during an examination is “Please let the curve be awesome”, next to “How many points do I need to not get a D?” (As it turned out the curve was pretty good, and I got an A) I staggered out of the stats department back to my room, picked up my suitcase, and made my way to JFK. My summer of adventure and discovery had just begun, but it would not be without obstacles.
My transit in London Heathrow wasn’t too difficult, although the distance between the arrival terminal for my AA flight and the connecting BA one was quite considerable, the directions between each terminal were clear. I had to go through passport clearance and security again at the departing terminal though, which would have been a problem if my inbound flight had been delayed. There was a French couple in front of me at the passport clearance line who were simply told that even though their flight was scheduled to take off in twenty minutes, they simply wouldn’t make it in time through security and to the exit gate. In future I will try to avoid booking connecting flights because of this risk – adds far too much stress to a holiday.
When I landed in Zurich, the immigration officer at passkontrolle peered at my passport as if it were a strange animal. I suppose he’s never heard of this small island. He tapped at a few keys on his computer, and asked what I was doing in Zurich and how long I would be here. A part of me wanted to say something like “I’m here to exacerbate the unsustainability of your welfare state”, but instead I said that I was here for a business conference. I thought it was truly ironic that I had been invited here to participate in a conference on globalization i.e. the free movement of capital, trade and labor, and here was a petty bureaucrat who epitomizes the opposite of that process.
When I left Zurich to connect in Dusseldorf, the lady at the Air Berlin counter was kind enough to seat me way up front to help with my transit. But when I landed, there were simply no instructions on transit and I had to go through passkontrolle twice – once for ‘entry’ and then again at exit. I had to actually leave through customs and the arrival hall, and go through the departure hall. There wasn’t actually a transit process. I guess the airport wasn’t designed to be a transit hub. A delay in my inbound flight would mean missing my connecting.
At the first passkontrolle, there was a mainland Chinese fellow in front of me who was also in transit, and we were discussing how there wasn’t a well-designed transit process here. When he got to the front of the line, the immigration officer asked “do you have a visa?”, and obviously he didn’t have one for Germany, and after some exchange with other immigration officers they insisted that he could not go through the airport unaccompanied, and had to wait there until someone came for him. Because obviously this smartly-dressed fellow with perfect English (but no German) with an outbound ticket in hand was going to immediately dash out of the arrival hall and exacerbate the unsustainability of their welfare state forever because they didn’t implement a transit process. As for me, they simply stamped my passport, which I found irritating since I was just transiting – neither Heathrow nor Zurich had done so. I looked back and told the fellow 保重， hoping he would make it on time. He looked pretty flustered, and at that moment, I understood some of the nonsense Chinese nationals have to put up with doing everyday normal things like catching a connecting flight. Of course, that spark of pan-Chinese nationalism quickly died as soon as I remembered my own China visa woes.
At the exit passkontrolle the immigration officer asked me lots of questions, which I found very odd since I was trying to leave the country – the entry passkontrolle officer didn’t make much of a fuss, and everywhere else, the exit officers barely glanced at it. Apparently petty bureaucrats can’t understand how an A national who lives in B is transiting from C to D through their country. He flipped through my passport several times, as if trying to find some inconsistencies. I couldn’t help but think how this was the inevitable result of a state bureaucracy. The man behind the glass has no incentive to work efficiently, and every incentive to maximize what petty power he does possess. There has to be a more rational way to do this, the marginal Atlas would simply shrug. It reinforces my commitment to supporting the free movement of capital, trade, and labor across borders in a globalized economy. Its not a perfect system, and not everyone will be happy. There are winners and there are losers in globalization. But if the petty bureaucrats should be those losers, and I know they will, I have no sympathy for them. Sometimes, just doing your job is not a valid excuse.
am looking forward to your next post