How should entry to a Free City look like?

My players are travelling to Tricity to blow up an Oil Rig. How should entering a Free City look like? They'll be travelling in a van.

I don't intend this to be a hassle or a thing to solve, rather I want to provide some local colour.
So far I'm thinking there should be some cheap, provisional concrete fence around the city, just to mark the border. And a guard that will ask what do they come in for. But will mainly be there to collect a bribe and after receiving it propose a contact for smuggled cigarettes, alkohol and stolen Maersk containers. It's a city of pirates after all.
Any other ideas?

We are playing in ~2068, retconned Poland. But I'm trying to preserve from the lore what does not contradict my retcon. So there was no Russian occupation, MCT is married with the Polish state, but I like the idea of Tricity Free City so it stays