Officially in Europe

24-04-2010
More by luck than judgement
To refresh your memory...When we crossed into Turkey from Iran we got caught up in a technical hiccup along with hundreds of other truckers, for some reason when the hiccups ceased we were still deterred from entering Turkey proper due to some sort of "duplication" of our details on the system, but after a bit of huffing it was sorted, or so we thought...
As soon as we picked up our tickets for Kos at the Bodrum port, the familiar frown appeared on the face of the issuing officer and those fatal words, customs and problem, were used in the same sentence.  Most of our paperwork was in order (managed to blag the insurance) but there was no record of our bikes coming into the country.  A phone call later and shaky explanations of duplications and hardware related terminal system failure and we were cheerfully informed that an error was made at the other end, therefore a further error would have to be made this end in order for us to "go back to UK." Apparently our details had been inputted on the wrong form, i.e. the local or domestic form not the international one, and the word "duplication" had lit a lamp somewhere in the depths of our man's memory and with a cheery "use the other border crossing next time," we were allowed on our way to the relief of the other passengers (mainly expats) patiently waiting on board to get their tourist visas stamped in Greece.  Which makes for a pleasant day trip, albeit expensive, but we found a way round that  Karen would be proud!