For the first time since nothing happened, I didn't have to take my shoes off to fly. Presumably the Germans wouldn't put up with such an obvious slap to their sensibilities.

Whenever I have spare time, I try to sneak aboard with my dignity intact, but thus far I have not been successful. I mean, you can still get on with like, a weapon, but not without making sure it's not *in your shoes*. Though the airline pilots and stewardesses and TSA drones have to get through the metal detector and the scanner like everyone else (they even get to put their shit right in front of yours, skipping the line completely), they don't have to take off their shoes. So, is it a threat or not?
I'll give you all the time you need to think on that.
No.

No it is not a threat.

Anyway, Germany also has roads with no speed limit (personally verified by passing a cop at 130 mph = 210 kph), and legal hookers (not personally verified at this time). So much for the land of the free. I think we have abnormally *few* freedoms, compared to Europe.

Don't worry! As soon as I reached the states, I had to take off my shoes.

Well actually, I had to wait in a 20 minute line in a room full of teeming masses (teeming means: to become filled to overflowing, which this room definitely was), then get through that wave of customs, then wait for my bag (this is in DC), which they kindly put up a sign for, then some people from my flight got their bags, then someone decided to take all the 917 bags and put them on the opposite side of this massive, sweltering room, so that took about forty minutes, then I had to wait in this long "line" composed of people pushing each other and angling for position, at which point I simply showed my passport, then put my checked bag on a belt so that they could re-check it.

Yes. Seriously.

By the time this had all happened, the plane I was supposed to catch was a distant memory, and THEN it was time to go through the Ministry of Convenience.





Also of note: the last time I traveled out of country, I was curious about the "duty free". This time I paid a little more attention. I don't recommend it- first, you are doing this shopping in the one place it is still impossible to compare via eBay, second, they don't seem to have many of the items that are expensive that might be *worth* it for you. If you are a fan of expensive whiskey AND they might have the brand you want, it's probably worth a look- but in general, everything you pick out has to be declared on a form, and you have to lug it from the plane through customs, and if you have a connecting flight and you bought a liquid (like Johnny Walker Blue Label) but didn't check any baggage, then you are boned- you have to go through security again, after all, and we all know you can't bring liquids! You instead have to put the liquid in your checked baggage (which you can get in trouble if you open before you walk through the second checkpoint, so you should do it right after that). Or just hand the $200 whatever-you-bought to the TSA dudes as a tip. Those guys don't get a lot of love.

The same for perfume, of course.

And there are different rules involving how much liquor or tobacco products you can buy, based on where you are from, where you are going, and your citizenship. There is a chart in the back of the book you can reference, so everyone here should be right at home there.

At security at the Cancun airport, we did not have to take off our shoes, presumably because Mexicans are a lot less worried about terrorists concealing weapons/bombs/midgets in their shoes than Americans are. In fact, they had several signs in highly visible places stating "DO NO REMOVE SHOES", I'm guessing because Americans are now so used to removing their shoes at security checkpoints that they were holding up the lines while fumbling to remove their buckles, straps, clasps, etc. from their shoes.

Of course, while going through security in America at the beginning of our trip, there was still the normal number of idiots who had no fucking clue that they needed to remove their shoes, so they held up the line of people holding their shoes in their hands, while they meticulously unbuckled, unstrapped or unclasped their seriously-wrong-for-flying shoes (flipflops FTW).