My blog

For my eldest daughter's sixteenth birthday, I decided to take her to a concert of her favorite band in London. The schedule was very tight. Flying out first thing in the morning, wandering around the city center, dinner in Soho, a concert at Wembley, a kebab in a nightclub, an overnight stay in a hotel and flying back after a Sunday breakfast of baked beans, fried eggs, rashers of bacon and white sausage, topped with Yorkshire pudding.

I set the alarm for three in the morning and a few minutes after six we took our unnumbered, uncomfortable seats on the Ryanair plane in Modlin near Warsaw, the three of us, my daughter and her friend.

After a few minutes, the captain started the engines and when it seemed like we were about to lift off the ground and begin to soar through the sky, our plane's engines stalled.

For twenty long minutes, no one bothered to inform the passengers about the reason for the grounding. I only found out about it from a text message I received from the carrier, which arrived at the same moment that the flight attendants began asking passengers to leave the plane.

The flight was canceled due to some technical issues and we were offered another one in six hours. Since our schedule fell apart, we decided to cancel the trip and headed for the exit.

It was just before seven in the morning. The exit gate with the three-pronged turnstile was blocked. Next to the exit was a room marked "Border Guard", in the direction of which I shouted to ask the guard what was going on with the gate. The lady guard approached me slowly and informed me that it was not possible to leave the airport at that moment because she was waiting for the shift change, which was going to happen in a moment. So I waited a few minutes, then called the lady guard again to ask when the change would happen. The lady guard replied that she did not know what was happening with the shift and that we had to wait.

I was getting pretty annoyed at not being able to leave the airport, but I waited patiently for another ten minutes, and the gate was still closed. Then I called the guard again and vented my anger: "I want to sleep. I'm a free man. Please let me leave the airport."

The lady guard was adamant, however. She only said briefly that we couldn't get out and had to wait.

At that point my patience ran out. I said I was going to go out and moved my right leg over the goal, and when I did the same with my left leg, I saw a group of commandos coming towards me out of the corner of my eye. When both my legs were already firmly on the other side of the goal, but still before the yellow line marking the country's border, one of the commandos in a balaclava with a machine gun exposed loomed before my eyes like an oak tree. He didn't say anything. For a brief moment we looked at each other in silence like heavyweight boxers just before entering the ring.

- I would like to leave the airport. I am a free man. Please let me through - I said. To which the commando, who initially seemed mute, blurted out: - Please retreat to the airport. And I said: - Sir. I have no intention of retreating anywhere. I just want to go home. My plane has been canceled and I don't understand why I can't leave the airport. - If you don't carry out my order, I will be forced to use direct coercion. - I have no intention of returning to the airport, so do your duty then - I replied.

At that moment, two commandos who had been standing nearby ran up to me. They snatched my mobile phone, which I didn't want to give up, so we had to struggle a bit. Then they put handcuffs on me, took me under my arm and, like in good gangster companies, dragged me to the border guard room, which turned out to be well prepared for such situations, as it had a small detention center, certainly designed for the needs of taming unruly passengers, where I was placed together with an armed border guard officer. They took my passport and ID card.

I spent about twenty minutes in the jail asking my guardian for permission to contact my daughter. "She must be terrified. You probably have a daughter too?" I asked. The officer didn't say anything. "At least take the handcuffs off me. I'm not some thug," I said desperately. "And will you follow my orders?" the guard asked. When I said yes, he surprisingly took the handcuffs off me.

After some time, the guard in charge appeared at the jail. At least that's what I concluded from the shoulder straps on his uniform, and I was glad that I would finally be able to talk to someone in charge. Unfortunately, the manager only said, "We're leaving." And turned on his heel.

I left the jail on my own two feet, accompanied by four guards, and we headed back to the airport. The turnstiles were working this time, probably because we were going in the opposite direction. Behind the gate I saw my daughter and her friend. They were terrified. I wanted to run up to them, but the guards wouldn't let me.

We left the airport building, and there was a border guard rover waiting for us. I asked myself in my mind – Where are they taking me? I will end up in the nearby forest.

We drove about three hundred meters to the other side of the airport. There was another border guard room with an even larger jail, to which they invited me. This time without handcuffs and without an escort.

After half an hour of thinking and waiting, the director guard appeared at the jail – as I gathered from the number of bars on his shoulder straps – and handed me a piece of paper saying, “Please sign this.” I replied without hesitation, “I’m not going to sign anything.” When I said those words, I noticed a look of surprise on the director guard’s face, as if it was the first time in his career that he had encountered such a reaction and didn’t quite know what to do about it. He took the paper and left.

He came back fifteen minutes later with a note, which this time he didn’t try to hand to me, but put on the table. “You’re free to go,” he said. And he left. I took the note he left me and left the jail. The girls were waiting for me by the door. I hugged my daughter with the feeling that convicts probably have when they leave prison after a long sentence.

The note contained a summons to appear for questioning at the border guard commander, which I threw in the bin. After returning home, I wrote a long letter to the commander complaining about the whole situation. A few weeks later, I received a reply from which it transpired that the commander had not found any irregularities and that he intended to impose a fine of three hundred złoty on me for unauthorized crossing of the state border. However, the fine never reached me.

They say you have to try everything in life. So I've already checked off handcuffs and arrest.