It turns out that people have already come up with a special term: RCS (reverse cultural shock). This is the feeling when you return from somewhere to your homeland and just fall out of the sediment with unaccustomed, or rather, from the “habit”.

          Recently, I experienced this kind of RCS in our Astana airport on arrival from Istanbul, when all the passengers were forced to pass the luggage through scan-phones. Even the poor pampered women had to throw their suitcases on the tape.

          Before that, I made several flights, I saw several airports in Europe and Asia. Believe me, I have never seen such a thing. Usually there are two passes: one is green (nothing to declare), another is red. Customs officers are standing somewhere, and in most cases you will not see them at all. Either they are hiding behind tinted windows, or they are watching through video cameras. I do not know. But in any case, I did not feel the feeling of passing into the prison zone anywhere. In our country at once you get to atmosphere of mistrust, suspicion, presumption of guilt and you are in an environment of people in a uniform. The only loss is barking sheepdogs on both sides. Is our customs so afraid of these unfortunate tourists? Is it really so terrible that they will bring one bottle of wine or a pack of cigarettes? And I do not see another danger of national security from tourists.

           Do local authorities think that people who have visited Milan at EXPO 2015 and experienced its comfort and hospitality will tolerate such a reception in Astana? I would not be surprised if some visitors of our EXPO-2017, without leaving the city, will buy a return ticket and leave our country.

           One hope that such excessive vigilance of customs officers is not the policy of the entire department and the Government, but simply the zeal of a specific head of this post. In this case, I want to bring to the attention of the management of the customs service and the entire Ministry of Finance: these people do something wrong.

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