If you lived here you would be home by now.

Over the borderline.

As you may know, I come from a country that essentially consists of a damp island in the north-east Atlantic.

In my former home, it was pretty easy to tell you’d left: if you found yourself drowning in cold, oily water, congratulations, you were no longer in Great Britain.

To actually get in, you had to swim, take a boat or fly. At least this was the case until 15 years ago, when Eurotunnel opened. I don’t believe many Brits have recovered from the shock: you still can’t get a direct train from anywhere other than London to Paris, Lille or Brussels. A land border is just not a British concept.

And so ten days ago was my first ever trip over one – the International Boundary, 5,521 miles long, between Canada and the United States of America. It’s the longest in the world.

This is what happened when I crossed the Peace Bridge by car from Fort Erie, ON, to Buffalo, NY…

Canada -> USA

You pass several massive signs saying “USA ahead” and “Last turn-off before the USA”, then cross the Peace Bridge over the Niagara River. The (bad) picture above shows the point you cross from Canadian to American territory, in the middle of the bridge – it’s where the flags are.

I don’t know who owns the twelve inches between the flags. The UN flag is there. It might be them. I like to think it’s perhaps some primitive Beaver God of Final Arbitration. Or something.

Then, at the other end of the bridge, there’s this:

Not very intimidating for an American border, is it? I was at least expecting fire-breathing eagles, red white and blue spikes and a 100ft mecha Obama.

After a couple of minutes in the traffic we drive up to the booth. The immigration officer is about 6′3″, and has a shiny black gun on his belt. “Are you a landed immigrant?… Any alcohol in the vehicle?… Where are you going?… How long for?… Do you have a visa waiver?… Hmmm.” He zips our passports up into a blue wallet, calls a colleague on his radio and hands the wallet to her. “You’re gonna have to go through immigration.”

I thought that was what I was doing?

He points us to a flat building to the side, with six or seven parking spaces, and gives us a small slip of paper with our car registration on. We drive over, park, and go in through the doors.

Now I’m unfortunately too much of a pussy to take photographs in places like this, so you’ll have to rely on a drawing from memory instead.

Key

A – Bars on the outer doors (and the windows too)
B – Wibbly shaped design feature, probably bulletproof glass
C – Immigration officer
D – Immigration officer they obviously didn’t care about
E – Cashier… wait, a cashier?
F – I don’t know what goes on in this room but I’m glad I’m not in it
G – One of televisions in the room is showing Nascar, a motorsport, apparently similar to Formula 1, but somhow made even more boring. The other is showing Fox News, which is running an imaginary story about a poll it has magicked up showing Obama’s support crashing.

It’s quite cold in here. We wait. There are about 15 other people in four or five families. We are the only white people. We wait. We listen to some 17-year-old starlet sing the Star Spangled Banner before the Nascar race. There are several immigration officers, but they are only calling one passport every five minutes.

We wait. The sun goes down.

One and a half hours later, one of the immigration officers calls me over. She is actually very sweet and polite, and with a nice calming voice, she tells me to fill in a form identical to the one I previously filled in online, takes a photo of my eyes and takes fingerprints from both hands.

It’s probably the cold, or getting confused by waiting, but for some reason I have trouble filling in the form. I nearly tick yes to the question about being a Communist. I’m sure these sorts of environments are designed to befuddle you. Luckily, I get it together for long enough to tick ‘No’ in every box.

“Er. Can we have our passports back now?”

“Sure. Just go over to the cashier’s desk.”

Apparently it costs US$6 to cross the border if you’re not from North America. If you’ve left your credit card in the car, they escort you outside and watch you as you rifle through your glove compartment.

Finally we get our passports, and a stamped ticket we have to show to a bellowing officer by the car park who then lets us drive off.

The offramp from the border control leads directly onto the Buffalo skyway. We didn’t stop in Buffalo. But it sort of reminded me of Birmingham from the M6. More pictures here. Yummy.

USA -> Canada

Americans may be some of the hardest-working people in the world, and only have an average of two weeks’ holiday, but boy are the signwriters indolent sometimes. The picture below is the same junction, on the other side of the interchange. (Two days later, which explains the weather difference.)

See? They can’t even be bothered to write out the full name of the country. I’d understand if it were something long and needlessly stupid like the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but abbreviating that to “Can” is just lazy.

Now er, the Canadian border. Needless to say, it was much easier getting back.

After again only a couple of minutes, we hand our passports and my permanent residence card to the official. He can’t be more than 19. He asks us how much we bought in the US (answer — a $20 t-shirt) and sends us on our way. We then only pay $3.75 for crossing the bridge, and bam! Back to Canada.

And you know, here there are no cold waiting rooms, dingy buildings or people in black with guns. It felt like coming home.

I think, next time I cross the border, I’ll bring a book.

Related links

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