YOU MAY STAY HERE FOREVER

In breaking a journey in Poland on a return from the Soviet Union, it is possible to get a 24-hour visa at the airport of entry. It is not only possible; it seems to be the only possibility. At the same time it is possible to change a little 'hard' currency into zlotys.
It is possible, but it sure isn't quick. It took several hours for a single clerk to process a single application. Most of the time seemed to be taken with him sitting silently at a desk on one side of a barrier, while I sat silently on the other side. There was no one else around. My passport and the application lay in front of him on the desk. After a suitable time he signed the paper, stamped it and the passport several times with different stamps, and then called me over to hand it back. After that I was free at last to get some currency changed, and then to start the search for a cab to the city and a hotel for the night.

It turned out that I should have been more patient and asked for more pieces of paper to be duly signed and stamped by all concerned.

The visit over-night was a success. I sampled 24 hours of Warsaw life; slept, ran, ate and shopped. In due course I returned to the airport for my next flight to Hamburg.

All was well until I came to the customs. The customs lady was obviously an accomplished weight lifter - in the heavyweight class - certainly not a person upon whom you would practice Polish jokes. She was happily mishandling people's baggage on a long counter leading to the security gate for the flight. Each passenger would laboriously lift his or her case to the counter and she would flip it over with one hand while she glared at its owner. Passengers were, without exception, meek before her.

I was meek too.

I offered my cases: my soft sided running bag and my camera case. She ignored them and said something guttural and unintelligible. It couldn't have been in my phrase book. I looked politely quizzical. More guttural sounds and this time something, which ended in "paper". I had to remain quizzical - "currency paper" - and I remembered the system in the Soviet Union.

Everything valuable had to be declared on entry and then checked with receipts on exit. This female Goliath was asking for that currency form - something I had not obtained on entry 24 hours earlier. I tried to explain, realizing that the affair of getting a temporary visa had forced me to enter the country separated from the normal passengers and somehow this

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