[Wikimania-l] CD

[Niklas Laxström]

On 11 August 2011 14:03, Itzik Edri <itzik at infra.co.il> wrote:
> We talked before, and also today with the airport - they know about
> Wikimania group, and they also to expedite this process.. The manger told
> us today that August is the most busy month on Ben Gurion - They doing as
> much as they can to make things more quickly for Wikimania participates (so
> again SHOW YOUR TAGS!), but they also have security guidelines, that they
> cannot', in any case, exceed them. The security of the other passengers is
> on their highest priority.

Unfortunately I have to add +1 bad experience. The first question they
asked me was what is the purpose of my trip, to which I answered
Wikimania conference. Immediately the questioner called someone else,
who took me away for inspection. The whole thing lasted about an hour
an half, and included questioning by multiple persons, taking me to an
other room for very detailed scanning, during which I had to strip to
my underwear. Meanwhile they went through my luggage and backpack and
shuffled everything, probably also tried to access my phone and laptop
too, but both were locked.

After coming back I had to demonstrate that both my phone and laptop
worked, and even after that they forced me to put laptop into check-in
luggage, including the charger which they seemed to be very suspicious
about. Yay for 5 hour layover in Amsterdam without laptop :(

The whole process made me angry and disappointed, because I had
otherwise a fantastic trip. The people were borderline rude, often
interrupting me in middle of sentence to do other things or letting me
wait for no apparent reason or without telling me what is going on or
what is going to happen. I stopped smiling after the first ten minutes
or so, but humbly did everything what they asked. I was wearing
Wikimania t-shirt, showed them my badge and registration confirmation.

Compared to how I was handled during my stay in Israel I was totally
not expecting anything like this. I didn't heard a single "sorry for
your inconvenience", only once they said me to "thank you for your
cooperation". Nevertheless I'm back home now with all my stuff, and
fortunately my friends had a better luck.

  -Niklas

PS: I didn't find them very good-looking either, like someone claimed.

-- 
Niklas Laxström