Day 1: The Kindle

So when I landed in Frankfurt I had to go through German TSA to get to my transfer flight, which was no big deal because I figured how much worse could it be than regular TSA?  I mean, they didn't even need me to take my shoes off so it couldn't be that bad.

So I pull my laptop out of my bag and my little bag of liquids and the guy pushes it all onto the conveyor.  I stand in the body-scan machine or whatever it is and then the guy wants to pat down my ankles and back which seemed weird but okay.  Then I look over and notice they've pulled my backpack aside and on of them is looking at it skeptically and not pushing it along with everything else.

I gather the rest of my things and put my jacket back on and he still has my backpack.  I stand there for a minute or two before he motions me over to a counter on the side of everything else.

"Is this your bag?"  And he's got a thick German accent and doesn't look super happy to be talking to me.

I tell him it is.

"Open it."

So I open it and he takes out my kindle off the top and looks at it.

"Vhat is this device?"

"Uhh, it's a e-reader, for reading."

"A computer?"  He raises an eyebrow at me in a way that would be almost funny in a different situation.

"Well, uhh, TSA didn't classify it as one that needed to be taken out separately..."

"But it has a CPU and processes things, correct?"

I couldn't think of anything to say and just went with "I s'pose so."

He took it and looked at it and put a scanner over it and looked at it again and looked at me for a long time.  I nodded at him because that seemed like an okay thing to do but he looked at me in way that said "that is not a good thing to do right now" and so I didn't nod again after that.  After a few more minutes he called a woman over who looked everything over again and took it the kindle out it's case and felt both sides of it slowly.

After taking it out of the case she walked away and I thought okay things are going better now at least she's not calling anyone else over but then she came back with three police officers with machine guns and vests.  They asked me some questions about why I was coming to Germany, etc, and looked at my passport.  I answered a few questions and suddenly everything was cool and the police officers smiled at me and told me to have a good trip.  I took my papers and Kindle back quickly just in case they changed their minds and managed to make it to the next flight on time.