The German border

The last time I crossed from Poland into Germany, I was taken off a train in the middle of a field at two o'clock in the morning. Soldiers with guns checked my passport, decided I was ok, and let me get back on the train. That was in in August 1989, while East Germany was still a communist country. Two months later, the Berlin Wall came down and within a year, Germany was a single, unified country.
This week, when we went to Germany, we still stopped at the border, but it was for little more than checking the registration of our bus. The building with the three flags (top) may be gone soon. The guards (middle) didn't have any weapons and didn't seem to be doing much. The little toll-booth looking things (bottom) were all empty, but they were where the German guards used to check passports. They stopped passport control about a year ago. Poland is now part of the European Union and crossing the border is no more eventful than going from Maryland into Pennsylvania.
Getting on the New Jersey Turpike takes more time than it does to get on the Autobahn. I didn't even bother to wake Sarah to show here the border because there was nothing interesting to see. Our bus has a speed limit of 80 km/hr, which is about 48 mph, so driving on the famed German autobahn was a let-down. We were getting passed by Audis, Mercedes, Beemers, and VWs. A trip that took us 4 hours could have been done by a car in about two-and-a-half. Aside from lots of farm fields, the only thing interesting on the autobahn was their exit signs: Ausfahrt.