27-V-1990.

Return from Slovakia. She brought lots of stuff, and a replacement camera. She bought a new praktika and left the old malfunctioning one in the hotel. Most of the stuff was in the big skiing bag, with absolutely no sports equipment inside. This bag outlasted the camera and most of the other stuff. Nine years later we used it last time to pack most of our stuff on the big trip abroad.

The trick with replacing a praktika with another one was in the customs. Importing anything technical was levied heavily, if possible at all - the customs officers would consider anything a contraband, plus they'd charge the levy as per list prices they'd dig out from some catalog, not the actual bill from the shop, because there were always shops who'd give you a two-part bill, one to show at the border and the other one with the difference.

Such shops may not have existed at all - among all the smugglers' tall tales that we exchanged, there were various outrageous claims, but never heard of one having a bill fixed to a smaller amount. Quite possibly fixing the bill is risky in most jurisdictions and the customs just invented them as a reason to charge by list price. So the thing you bought cost 2000 two years ago, costs 1200 now and you got it at discount for 699. The customs will still be charged on 2000 basis, and it doesn't pay to complain or raise a fuss, they can always invent any sort of custom infraction and it may cost even more, or you may just forfeit the thing. It's quite possible that the customs invented the whole story to justify charging by list price.

But there was this excuse that you could bring anything in, as long as you declared it and showed it to the customs on your way out. So take out the old one, bring in the new one, same make same model. Well, more or less same model - this had a couple of letters more, I think VLC instead of just L, which meant it had an exposure meter inside. You press a button near the shutter button, and in the viewfinder you see the dial come active. If it stood straight up, exposure was OK. Left meant low, right meant over. The handheld separate meter that I had was much better - it could even measure the moonlight correctly - but this was much faster and always in hand.

This praktika lasted until about 1998 or so, and then there was some fuckup with the shutter, just like the one before. But then the old one lasted about fifteen years, and this one only eight.

This kind of smuggling trip was only smalltime - you couldn't bring so much stuff with you, the space on the bus being limited. Still, there were pros who carried two or more of much larger bags and could fit a lot into them. The logistics required knowing where exactly the bus will stop when you return, so there'd be someone with a car to take you and the wares home.

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Mentions: praktika, Stana Čopanja, škodilak, in serbian

5-XII-2013 - 10-III-2026