Such a pain in the neck, these national borders.
Driving south for our now customary autumn migration to Malta, my wife and I, together with our pet dog Suzy, stopped for the night at Maslianico, a border town just inside Italy from Switzerland, close to Como.
Since Switzerland is a member of the Schengen zone of free movement within the EU, even though it’s not an EU member, one can easily cross its border without any checks. You just drive through. Having said this, there are still crossing points where stern looking officers will peer straight into your eyes while you’re going by. Entering Maslianico (Italy) from Vacallo (Switzerland) we passed through such a covered area and tried to look as innocent as possible while a posse of officers peered sternly at us before waving us on. We had passed the test successfully!
The pretty little hotel where we were staying was just five minutes’ walk away from the border. To get back into Switzerland, you go down the street from the hotel, turn right into Via 20 Settembre and barely a hundred metres away there’s the customs complex with the stern looking officers.
Looking westwards from the hotel, you could see Switzerland in silhouette, backed by a colourful sunset.
A quick search on Google maps gave us an interesting looking restaurant, which was across the border, in Vacallo. So we drove back again into Switzerland, where we had a delicious, if a tad expensive, dinner.
If it weren’t for prices being in francs and not in euros, you would hardly realise you weren’t in Italy, as people here speak Italian, like everyone else in Italy. The language is so specific almost exclusively to its country of origin.
We left the restaurant with our tummies full and happy. Outside, the moon (also full, like our tummies) was lighting up the country on the other side of the border.
A five minute drive would get us back to our pretty hotel in Maslianico. We turned into the customs shed structure that’s used to shelter stern looking officers, but the way was barred! We drove further along to bypass the blockage and get to the hotel through another street. Literally: no way. Google maps went berserk indicating for us to go back through the blocked access, looping unto itself, begging us to drive through steel and concrete barriers inside Dogana di Pizzamiglio towards Via 20 Settembre in Maslianico, Italy.
We were well and truly trapped inside Switzerland, and had to ask a local for help. She explained to us that, “Oh yes, customs is closed for the night after 9 pm. You’ll need to drive through La Dogana di Breggia via the autoroute towards Como”.
But why? Why?
Is Switzerland in the Schengen zone of free movement, or is it not? Okay, you’re a sovereign nation, you have a right to supervise your borders and all that load of whatever. Not in the spirit of Schengen, but never mind. Well, actually I do mind because I had had no warning about this and at 10.30 in the night we were trapped inside their silly sovereign nation, having entered freely and legally through an ordinary street with a shelter for stern looking officials, and the way back to our hotel was now blocked.
What’s really absurd about this saga is that, had we intended to smuggle a ton of Swiss cheese or kidnap Roger Federer out of their country, we would have still gotten away with it because Italy was still freely accessible through La Dogana di Breggia via autoroute no. 2 towards Como. If we wanted to take a container full of stolen Rolex watches into Italy, we wouldn’t have done it through Via 20 Settembre in Maslianico close to our pretty little hotel there. We would have driven the truck straight into Italy on the fast motorway. So, again, why? Why close off Via 20 Settembre and spoil our otherwise wonderful evening? Just a pig-headed, bureaucratic, petty show of importance. So annoying and unnecessary, not to mention their own waste of resources.
Such a pain in the neck, these national borders.
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