Quote:
Originally Posted by beppe
There was a time, some years ago, in which I had to go to Paris for work, about once every two weeks. I could take a plane at Malpensa (which is not far from where I live) and fly AirFrance or Alitalia, but the schedule was such that it was not comfortable for day commute. Either I had to stop work too early or be back home too late.
I found out that I could fly SwissAir from Agno (Lugano) which is even closer than Malpensa, and in spite of a stopover in Bern I could make it in time in the morning, do my business and still be home for dinner. So that's what I did. In Paris, on my way back, I bought a 1 liter bottle at the duty free shop.
The guy of the Agno customs wanted me to pay duty. I said no, I just drive to Italy without stopping here one minute more than I need. He said that he could not care less of what I did outside the customs and that I had to pay duty anyway. So I looked him up, with his uniform and regulatory alpine look, and told him. Look, I am spending money in your airports, I am spending money with your air company, why do you want me to fly on another route, and spend my money with them, Are you working against your country interests? Are you Swiss? A good Swiss, or what? Don't you want me as a customer in this airport? And my look was more and more disgusted at his unswisseritude.
It did not take more than a moment under my blue eyed stare for him to understand the enormity of his mistake so that he told me to go.  |
Oh, well done. My usual understanding of customs is that you can never win, might as well just do what they say, but that's an excellent contra story.
It's not quite a customs story but we had a long trip to France years ago in which we were driving through the Loire Valley stopping at various caves and buying bottles of wine. The idea was to enjoy them in the area they were made (ie the whole terroir thing) so we were looking for picnic spots etc. But we found we had more wine than picnics and
found we were leaving the area the wine was from. I called this 'wine lag' like jet lag but more pleasant 'cos the solution was, obviously, stop the car and drink everything.