We thought “Wonderful” or words to that effect! Our flight is due to leave in 4 hours so there’s no way we can do that. But we work out that this guy might just think we’re dumping the car here and he doesn’t want the hassle of doing all the paper work. Judging by cars in the car pound this seems to be a favourite pastime of many ex-pats who don’t want to drive their old cars back to the UK. There’s even an old Citroen and caravan in the pound!

{mosimage}So, we explained again that we were only returning to the UK for 3 weeks and would be back again to pick it up. Just at that moment our knight in shining armour appeared. He was a young employee who understood what we were saying and soon organised the other staff into action. He took my passport, driving licence and car registration document and began filling in a form within a large ledger. From time to time he would rouse the other staff  to do things for him. I was then given the form and my passport and asked to visit an office further down the building. I knocked and entered. There was a woman sat behind a large desk with a couple of people sat around – she was the boss. I gave her the paperwork and she called another person in. She asked the man a few questions. She then looked me up and down and started writing on a piece of paper. When she finished writing she gave me my papers back and I took all the pieces of paper back to the guy who then stamped my passport. Everything was then whisked away again to be signed by the boss. When the paper work was returned I was asked to move the car into the compound. They unlocked the gate and I parked up.

We returned to the office and I signed various forms including a receipt and handed them my car key. They put their own paperwork into an envelop along with the key, handed me my passport, registration form and my own copy of the receipt. I was free to go!

All in all it took just over an hour to complete the process and, besides the initial misunderstanding, was straightforward.

When we passed through immigration at Dalaman airport the immigration officer didn’t even register that the car stamp had been put into my passport. I would have thought he would have done a double take or even checked it but he just stamped my visa and let me through. I did go through my mind whether all this had been worth it. Maybe I could have chanced it and tried to get through without leaving it with Customs? But with a flight to catch this would have been a big risk to take.

Keep an eye out for our next article when we have to go through the whole process again to get the car back out of the compound and into our possession.