Since the schengen agreement in europe you are so used to the fact that there are no more border controls for travelers. Except you move to the far east of europe … Ukraine. Never recognized before that border checks can last one hour and more on each side. Custom officer only speak the local language and if you are lucky the one on the other side which in my case wouldn’t help me!
I got no trouble in leaving Hungary where as my compartment mate who is ukrainian had to pay 30€ cos he stayed too long in schengenen area. But for a moment I felt uncomfortable. They asked me another two times to check my passport … looking for a reason to charge me too?
On the ukrainian side of the border every thing went smoothly. It just took ages … at 2:22am we finally got our passports back but it took another 30min or so till we moved on. The whole border check lasted at least 2:30 hours.
Crossing borders is here not only about passports but also about changing the trains gauge which is quite unusual! While the people stay on the train the cars get lifted and the gauge gets changed by the maintenance crew. Never seen that before 🙂