Thanks to Trump, the vacation in the state of emergency starts
Everyone knows them: the excitement before vacation. With me it was particularly great this time. My travel destination: New York. Since Donald Trump has been back in the Oval Office and has been ruled with even more ego, entry has also become more complicated.
The bad news overturned weeks before departure: stories of people who were rejected at the border, by grim border guards, of hours of surveys due to alleged ambiguities in the travel purpose. The horror scenario in my head robbed me of a week of sleep.
I meticulously studied my role as a good tourist.
As a journalist, it was clear to me: my job could potentially make me suspicious. The only thought of my last articles in which I campaigned for women’s rights or wrote about the demands of the LGBTIQ community made me nervous. Immediately before departure, I avoided any Trump criticism. Who knows how thoroughly you examine my timeline. Instead, I meticulously studied my role as a good tourist. In constant loop I repeated my entry mantra: « I’m here for tourism. »
The high heels in my front yard
After landing the big tremor: we found ourselves in a snake that moved tougher than a Monday morning. I sweated, I was bad, a thriller played in my head long ago, in which I have to endure in a windowless room under bright neon light and in the end only helplessly screamed « make America Great Again ».
The moment of truth came after two hours. I stepped up, looked into the eyes of the border official. He took my passport, I pressed my sweaty fingers onto the scanner, he stamped – and that’s it. Just waved through. The procedure was so disappointingly unspectacular that I almost wanted to complain.
From the life of the LW journalists
The “gazettchen” is an informal column in which the authors legally tell about their everyday experiences or even give an insight into their thoughts. This has a long tradition: On December 3, 1946, an opinion with the title « Today » appears for the first time at the top of the side left on the first local side in the « Luxemburger Word ». On January 13, 1971, the « Gazettchen », which has been extremely popular with readers, then became the « gazette », which has kept its Premium-Platz in Luxembourg’s top-class daily newspaper to this day and across all layout.
:format(webp)/s3/static.nrc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/28200110/web-2805BUIblatten.jpg "A new natural disaster is lurking for buried Swiss mountain village of Blatten")
