Post twenty-four, Official Traveling Day six-point-five

We boarded the bus after eating a super version of the Ukrainian (writ large: basically eastern European) specialty Borshch. An hour before we reached the Ukrainian-Polish border, Emma and I heard the odd sound of 90% of the passengers taping things together. Yeah, that sound is noticeable. And if they’re taping cigarette packets together, you tend to wonder what’s going on. 45 minutes from the border, it became clear. They were stuffing the packets wherever they fit—inside the seat-cover linings (and then sewing them up), within the foam seats, under the seats, under the walkway, above the seats. One woman strapped them—suicide-bomber-style—around her midsection. Cigarettes cost half as much in Ukraine as they do in Poland, and these women (and man) were smuggling as many as they could across the border.
At the Ukrainian border, no one batted a lash about the smugglers. Instead, they gave me and Emma a hard time, just because they could. I’m sure they know the excruciating discomfort Americans experience when their passports are taken (and its unclear whether they’ll be returned); they milked the discomfort as long as possible. When they finally gave up our passports, we advanced in the bus 20 meters and reached the Polish border. Here we were all forced out of the bus, with our baggage. The baggage and the bus were both thoroughly searched. From the latter the border guards emerged, a full hour later, with bulging trash bags full of smuggled goods. Emma and I imagined we’d be in a bus of despondent smugglers, but on the way from the border, a remarkable number of smugglers threw themselves on their smuggling hideaways, and came away with sacks of cigarettes themselves. I’m still not sure if the ruse is cost-effective, and it certainly isn’t when the time required to search the bus is factored in—however, if you’re Polish, and you’re poor enough not to count your time by the hour, perhaps it makes a profit.
At any rate, Emma and I arrived in Lublin, after traversing 120 km, 6 hours later. It was too late to take the last bus to Chelm, so we took a cab, got back to my apartment, ate heaps of pasta, and went to sleep.