Seventeen thousand five hundred people. That is how many passed through the Bogorodica border crossing alone between 12:00 on 2 August and 12:00 on 3 August, the interior ministry reported. About six thousand of them were Macedonian citizens - 5,864 entered and 5,948 left. Foreign nationals made up an even larger share: 10,249 entered and 11,648 left the country.

The result on the ground is what anyone who passed through already knows. According to the Macedonian Auto-Moto Association, the wait to exit at Bogorodica is around three hours, and to enter around one. At Dojran, the exit wait is also about three hours. At Tabanovce, around 30 minutes in both directions.

A customs officer with twenty years' service says he has never seen this

At the Dojran crossing the queue stretched all the way to the St Ilija church at the entrance to Star Dojran, and the standstill lasted more than four hours. Officials at the crossing say the cause is the sheer number of vehicles, which at one point left the Greek border services without the capacity to process them at the usual pace - so the queue spilled back onto the Macedonian side.

A Serbian citizen who waited for hours between the two borders posted online what the customs officer told him: "The officer told us he has worked here for 20 years and does not remember a jam like this. Right now we are in the space between the borders."

Twenty years at one border crossing is long enough to have seen everything - summer seasons, holidays, long weekends. When that particular man says he has never seen a crowd like this, it is a more credible indicator than any statistic.

The Dojran figures show where the valve is

Compare the two crossings. Bogorodica, in 24 hours - 17,500 people. Dojran, in the same period - 399 Macedonian citizens entered, 1,104 left, and among foreign nationals 1,295 entered and 1,174 left. So roughly four thousand against seventeen and a half thousand.

And still the exit wait at Dojran is three hours. That means the problem is not only the number of vehicles, but the processing capacity of a far smaller crossing - one plainly not built to absorb even part of the overflow from Bogorodica.

The interior ministry says all measures are being taken and all human and technical capacity has been deployed to speed up the flow while carrying out mandatory border checks. Border services are asking drivers to be patient, to follow the updates and, where possible, to choose their travel time.

Advice on patience at the end of a long weekend, when everyone is returning at the same moment because tomorrow is a working day. The summer season falls in the same weeks every year. The return peak lands after the same holidays every year. It is the one completely predictable thing in this entire story - and it is exactly the thing that catches us unprepared, year after year.