Just some personal experience:
Have to agree with Bill Erfurth's posting on security behaviour in Northern
Europe. I travel quite regularly from the Netherlands to Sweden, and most
of the time it was very easy to convince them to hand-search my jacket,
containing my films (I always try to stick as close to my films as
possible). Guess Bill's right on the attitude thing: if you are polite, and
take the time to explain why you don't want to have your films x-rayed,
things go pretty easy.
The only bad experience I had was when I had to fly through Paris. I'm not
mentioning the level of disorganisation on Charles de Gaulle Airport ;-) ,
but only referring to airport security. First of all they look like they've
been hired because of their muscles, not their brains. Most of them are, to
put it nicely, not too fluent in any language but French. They claimed
their x-ray machine was save 'till 400 ASA, but since I pushed my Tri-X to
1600, I didn't want to run that risk. After about 15 minutes of discussion,
there were only two options left: either I had to give in, or miss my
flight. Fortunately, the negatives came out OK, but these guys' behaviour
was below any civilised standard. Guess I'll take the train to Paris next
time...
Pim Stouten
Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing,
Amsterdam Office
tel: +31(0)20 - 6719926
fax: +31(0)20 - 6720951
GSM: +31(06) - 21535678
http://www.bvdep.com
