Shocking Story Of Being Denied Entrance Into Israel

Is he your boyfriend?

“Well umm, not necessarily ..”

“Ma’am, are you dating or aren’t you?”

A stern and unwavering airport security guard tasked with defending the Israeli border peered down at me. Highly suspicious of a young woman from another country traveling to Israel alone with a British man via Poland, she waited for my answer. (I mean, that’s a bit confusing to keep track of- I get that!)

It wasn’t until later that I learned they thought I was being sex trafficked.

As it turns out, Israel has had a massive spike in women posing as tourists when in fact, they are being trafficked.

Read about it here.

Sex trafficked. Are you kidding me?! I naively thought this border control officer just wanted to know when we were gonna, ya know, take the leap and make things Facebook official. We just haven’t had “the talk” yet okay?! Jeeeeeeze.

“How long have you know this man? When exactly did you start dating? What is the nature of your relationship exactly?” She kept hounding me.

Meanwhile, a man had taken James aside- “What is the nature of your work? How long have you been working in Poland?”

Stressed and confused about why we couldn’t get on the plane, I felt tears welling up in my eyes as the woman refused to give back my passport or let me speak to James. Just repeatedly asking- “Are you dating or aren’t you?”

Frustrated, we stood by as the plane departed without us. Not one but TWO planes left to Israel without us on it. Making my journey across the Israeli border my biggest travel fail of all time. (Full list of travel fails coming soon, because hey- we gotta laugh at ourselves. And I’d hate for you to think that travel is nothing but glamorous Instagram pictures.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s backtrack to earlier that day. …

Waking up in Krakow, Poland-(one of my favorite cities!) normally has me hopping out of bed first thing in the morning to go explore. But jet lagged from a transatlantic flight and a long layover in Copenhagen, I slept in, was slow to repack and found myself rushing out the door to the airport.

James and I in Krakow, Poland this spring

James and I got in an Uber feeling rushed but ultimately, like we would be fine. Ohhh, how stupid and naive- young and hopeful we were. Because that day, the universe delivered us the mother-load of stressful Uber rides.

Caught in traffic? Okay.. it’s fine, it’s fine. I mutter under my breath. Until the Uber driver takes a wrong turn tacking on an additional 28 min. *cue that “omg I’m going to miss my flight” panic* and for some reason, which I will never fully understand, when we (at long last!) reach the highway- our driver refuses to drive like any functional adult with a license. And instead, he proceeds to drive half the speed limit. Not exaggerating. Literally half. Every other vehicle on the road is passing us-people begin honking at us we are driving so slow.

As an overly polite born-and-raised Minnesotan who struggles with confrontation, I finally mustered up the courage to politely ask, “um excuse me sir, but is there any chance we could go the speed limit-we are about to miss a flight.” And do you know what he did?

Calmly, he looked me in the eye, flatly said, “no” then turned up the music and continued driving so slow I swear we could’ve been going backwards.

Andddddd, you guessed it- we missed that flight.

I will never understand why he did this. But despite this sadistic Uber driver and insane traffic, it was of course still our fault for missing that flight. We should have allowed plenty of extra time. Lesson learned. I won’t let it happen again.

But that second flight?!

We are sitting in the airport in Warsaw, Poland after a mad dash and a train ride to another airport (there were no more flights out of the Krakow airport to Israel that day!) when they announce boarding.

Our section is called and we go up to scan our tickets. Relieved that finally, after all the hassle of the morning – we will only be about six hours late and $300 down getting into Israel. It could be worse right?

Right. As soon as we scan our tickets- the machine flashes a red X. We try to scan them again- same result. An airline attendant comes over and the questioning begins…

Little did we realize, certain airlines require you to be questioned before a flight into Israel. And because we had booked the ticket only a few hours before the flight, we looked extra suspicious. Paired with the fact that I was a single women traveling with a man from another country instead of a tour group- well we had most certainly alerted border control as a possible sex trafficking situation.

Now I think this is a very important issue that should be taken seriously but wow, it was inconvenient for us – stress, lost time and hundreds of dollars gone. I was still being hounded about the nature of my relationship with James when the last flight to Israel took off for the day. This was a pricey mistake.

Ahh well, trying to make the best of it- we bought a journal and jokingly made a list of all the things we could have bought with the amount we just spent on missed flights to Israel. (7 round trip tickets to Warsaw, 1,200 cupcakes from our favorite bakery etc.)

A sleepover in the Warsaw airport

So it was decided. We would take the first flight out in the morning. But ironically, the ONE night we get stuck in the airport- is the night they decide to test each and every one of the fire alarms. It wasn’t a very peaceful slumber party in our terminal given that the blaring alarms were going off for two full hours.

But when morning came, we were the first ones ready to board that plane. Terrified something else would go wrong, we nervously clutched our tickets and didn’t breath a sigh of relief until we felt the plane taking off the ground.

At long last, we made it into Israel.

Since we had dealt with so much bad luck, it seemed the universe took pity on us and for the remainder of the trip- nothing went wrong. In fact, everything seemed to go strangely well.

Our luck changes

So well in fact, that we started a list of all the random, free things we were given- a free upgrade, free appetizers at a restaurant, a free necklace, several free rides when we were lost, a free bus ticket… the list goes on. It’s almost like the universe was saying, “Whoops, sorry about putting you through all that, let me make it up to you.”

And from then on, we had an incredible trip.

But please learn from my mistakes, allow extra time for the occasional turtle of an Uber driver. And if you plan to go into country with a sensitive border- arrive early and look into possible additional requirements ahead of time.

Has anyone else had a hard time getting into Israel? Let me know!

Read:MY WORST TRAVEL MOMENTS OF ALL TIME