Boston 31 October, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Part 1 – The airport
Before you can actually reach Boston, you have to get through the two airports. One in your current location, and the one on arrival. With most places this isn’t an issue, but going to America you have to contend with random security checks. The amount of people being checked isn’t unusual, but the persistence is quite unique. Instead of having one check and assuming that the one check will pick up on anything untoward, they assume you must have hidden anything suspicious on the first check so will do another, thus the majority may not get searched, but those singled out will be thoroughly searched 4 times before they’re permitted entry.
Enthusiasm should be reigned in if you hear someone assigned to fetching you an escort, this will be the bad kind, not the kind that things like GTA lead us to believe is widespread. Be prepared to be passed between different departments for checks while each accuse the previous of incompetence. While going through your passport page by page they will attempt to kill you with the evil eye every time they encounter a stamp from a country which has had any form of violence in the last five years, or any accusations of terrorism. If there have been no accusations of terrorism, they will then accuse the country, and then unleash the evil eye.
The searches are thorough, intrusive and avoid anything which is sealed with tape, because that would just be inconvenient. But they will definitely search you, provided you’ve got a suspiceous name, or have ever visited the Arab world. That’s assuming you get ‘filed’ into the right department of course, and that’s an assumption that shouldn’t be assumed.
Part 2 – Everything else
The rest is okay I guess.