You’ll be back?

This is not a guarantee that The Terminator, aka Arnold Schwarzenegger, will be back. You might recall that “Iʼll be back” is a catchphrase associated with Mr S (I’m cognisant of my character count limit), which was made famous in the 1984 film The Terminator.

Surprisingly, Schwarzenegger’s use of the catchphrase is not limited to the movie, having been used in the 1985 Commando: “I’ll be back, Bennett”; the 1987 The Running Man: “I’ll be back”; the 1988 Twins: “If you’re lying to me, I’ll be back”; the 1990 Total Recall: “I’ll be back”; the 1993 Last Action Hero: “I’ll be back”; and in 2012, in The Expendables 2.

In the last-mentioned film, during a gunfight in an airport, Trench (Mr S) says: “I’m almost out, I’ll be back!” to which Church (Bruce Willis) responds: “You’ve been back enough. I’ll be back.”

Never a truer word has been spoken; Mr S has indeed been back enough. Maybe it could be attributed to the fact that he was never stopped before or detained, for that matter. Which begs the question as to whether Mr S would be back, or at least be passing through German Customs ever again?

On January 17, Mr S was temporarily detained (you could read ‘detained’, depending on whether you consider three hours to be temporary) by Munich Airport Customs officials after failing to declare a luxury watch in his luggage. He was on his way to his native Austria and was detained after a custom-made Audemars Piguet wristwatch, worth nearly $30 000, was found in his luggage.

Immediately after the discovery, criminal tax proceedings were initiated against Mr S, with German Customs arguing that the watch “should have been registered because it is an import”. In his defence, Mr S argued he was intending to auction the luxury watch for a good cause – for his nonprofit Mr S Climate Initiative – which was to hold a fundraising event in Kitzbühel, near Austria’s Kaiser Mountains, the very next day.

Should you be pondering why the T-101 escaped this experience – quite simply, it did not wear a watch or carry it on its person.

Back to Mr S – a penalty of $38 000 was imposed on him, based on an assessed customs value of $30 000. It’s understood Mr S was asked to fill out a customs declaration form, and then to pay the dues. This required Mr S to use his credit card. It is on days like this when you pray that you have not maxed out your credit card, but, somehow, I do not think Mr S ever has such concerns.

But when you are having a bad day, it tends to linger; so, for good measure, the airport credit card machine was broken. So much for German reliability. As a consequence, Mr S ended up being accompanied, by customs officials, to a bank to withdraw the money. The trip to the bank failed. Thankfully, a working credit-card machine was eventually located.

If you were expecting the credits to now start rolling to signify the end of the story, I fear that I need to disappoint. As they do in the movies nowadays by showing the bloopers in between the credits, according to a German Customs, “the watch will probably have to stay”.

At this time, Mr S seems to have had a sense of humour failure, telling the German Bild tabloid: “This is the problem that Germany is suffering from. You can no longer see the forest for the trees.”

Not deterred by the Terminator, a spokesperson for Munich Main Customs told German Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper: “If the goods remain in the European Union (EU), you have to declare them through customs. This applies to everyone, whether their name is Schwarzenegger or Müller, Meier, Huber.”

Germanyʼs Central Customs Authority added that “non-EU travellers are required to declare any goods that will remain within the country if they exceed $467; the traveller must also pay import duties”.

It is unconfirmed whether the German Customs officials waved Mr S through with the greeting, “Hasta la vista, baby”.