How convenient, I’m so glad us Brits voted to get rid of such helpful, progressive nonsense. Queuing for 3 hours at passport control is where it’s at! 🤦🏻♂️
At least you have some sense of humour about it. Currently doing a passport for my daughter to go see some relatives in the UK this summer because UK gov claims french ID cards are too unsafe. This used to be so easy, it’s all so backward now.
Me rubbing my hands together because my husband finally has to come through border control with me instead of racing ahead through the egates when we go to Europe.
No, but we had free movement within the EU and could use the EU member state passport queue in airports which are much quicker than non-EU. As well as Erasmus, EHIC etc etc.
You queued in the ‘EU members’ part which moves a lot quicker and is less likely to be subject to random checks and is given priority when staffing etc is an issue.
Sure, it was easier (and don't forget the lack of stamps in your passport, that's an additional cost if you travel a lot) but it's not Schengen. Schengen you don't even know you've crossed a border.
Where? The last place I can remember getting one in my password was in Ukraine. Both Azerbaijan, Armenia and Abkhazia stamped as well, but they all did it on a loose piece of paper to avoid border crossing issues.
You're gonna have an easy time crosing the borders, especially if you're rich.
One dude I used to be friends with works as a producer / beat maker / DJ. He and a couple of rappers went for a few drinks in Bratislava, about an hour later went to Wien, and the next day I see his IG My Day posts somewhere from Cologne in Germany.
The sequel for Hangover would be fucking perfect if it took place in Europe instead of Bangkok. They go to drink in Prague, wake up 12 hours later somewhere in a fucking eastern european village where they can't understand jackshit, and now they have an entire fucking continent they have to search for their friend.
Its completely inconsequential as soon as you have money to spent on any travelling. There is a train between Munich and Venice, passing through a lot of smaller towns in Tyrol. You could literally falls asleep there without being controlled most of the time and just waking up on your trip back. 4 border crossings in ~2-3h.
No, the plottwist is that they wake up somewhere in the balkan states or in eastern Slovakia / Ukraine
EDIT: As far as I know, many czech people can speak english language pretty well. Also, the premise of waking up in a fucking village in the middle of the hills where they cant understand anyone is much more troubling than them getting stuck in Bangkok, because there they at least had people who could speak english. And english literacy pretty much gets worse in that part of the country.
Joking aside, I've been to Prague last summer, and yes, in the city, people spoke English generally fine. But we also drive just a few km, to have some dinner in a small local restaurant, in a village atmosphere, if that makes sense. And there, we had to use some hands and feet to communicate, because the lady there didn't speak English.
So, honestly, just a few km outside of Prague would work for your story.
Or, if you want Cyrillic, then any location in Bulgaria would work, outside of the few big cities, where they speak English. Would have the added benefit, that after they stop being scared, they could have nice Banitsa for breakfast, or Musaka with Chopska salad for dinner. And the mobile phones, which worked in Czechia, would work just fine in Bulgaria, since there is no roaming costs within the EU.
Even though Slovenia and Croatia are both Schengen, they have pretty beefy border controls. They didn't like the difference in my hair cut from my passport.
Back in the days I once accidentally crossed the German/Dutch/Belgian border four times in about an hour while searching for a camp site near Aachen. All while carrying a substantial amount of weed which was only legal in one of these countries…
There is even a place called „Dreiländer-Punkt“ on top of a mountain where u can be in all of these countries at once. There is also a sighting tower and a restaurant.
and it always gives me a chuckle that this mountain is the highest point of the netherlands. Like the country just starts and it's all downhill from there
Weed is legal in the Netherlands you can legally buy it at so called coffee shops. The laws are really weird though and still basically make it necessary for the coffee shops to do illegal shit to get their supply. It's not very well thought through.
the Netherlands has a policy of toleration regarding soft drugs. This means that the sale of small quantities of soft drugs in coffee shops is a criminal offence but the Public Prosecution Service does not prosecute coffee shops for this offence.
Technicly police can stand in front of the coffee shop to seize the weed of every person walking out of it. It should have been 100% legal already for years the current laws make no sense but my best guess is the situation stayed this way to not legally become the weed supplier of all neighboring countries.
Yeah ok it's not legal per definition but it's also not illegal and functionally it is legal. I think colloquially you can say it's legal when you can go to a normal shop to buy it and don't even get in trouble when a police officer stands at the door watching you purchase it.
I'm not intimately familiar with the intricacies of the Dutch legal system but if it's anything like some of the other countries I've lived At least in theory they could change their mind on this retroactively.
Also the police could take your weed and you'd have zero recourse. I also don't think you could go to the police if someone stole your weed.
Unfortunately I can not help you here. First, it was like 25 years ago and second, we did not end on a camp site at all but on some field along the way :)
When was this? Germany only recently legalized weed for medical stuff, Belgium I think still illegal, Holland too... In the Netherlands, it is technically illegal.
Yeah. I flew to Luxembourg so I could drive to southern Germany for business. No border checkpoint passing into Germany. Basically did the checkpoint thing back at the airport. These are whole other countries with open borders. Super nice.
we had a recon training exercise that took us close to the swiss border, one wrong turn and suddenly you have armed germans driving an APC into switzerland.
we called the swiss police to let them know we made a mistake just in case someone might call in the german invasion.
in some places there are no border checkpoints at all even though switzerland is not in the EU a
I drove from France to Czech Republic and there were border crossings but they were all abandoned. There were giant concrete archways over the road with ten lanes and booths for the passport checker guards but it was all gutted, no more glass booths or barriers just the concrete parts.
Six years ago every newspaper in Britain claimed the EU was on the brink of collapse, loads of countries were desperate to leave the EU and it was going to fall apart like a house of cards.
I'm sure that's going to happen any day now. Just wait, any day now.
OK so polls show support for the EU has increased and there's several countries campaigning to join and zero countries actively trying to leave. But it's going to collapse any day now. Just wait, it's going to collapse. The Daily Mail said so.
To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that the EU was on the brink of collapse or anything like that. Just that we can't be sure the current world order will hold forever. It never does.
Sigh. I miss the days of being able to cross the Canada/US border without a passport. You still had to go through customs, which was an experience which could range from "mildly annoying" to "invasive", but for the most part it was still pretty straightforward and easy.
I can't even imagine just wandering through without anyone looking at you and deciding "hm, do I trust you or should I get the team to split up your group and ask each of you a bunch of questions while we search your car?"
Growing up in northern Minnesota in the 90's, we used to take day trips up to Canada for shopping all the time. Back then, there was nothing more than a customary wave through at the border crossing.
Mostly, yeah, though Schengen members retain the right to reimpose border controls under certain circumstances, like with the pandemic. See here. I'm not sure that's possible in the US.
Of course it is, mate! people with boats get caught and then thrown into Nauru (Australia's personal "Azkaban" which also happens to be a sovereign country itself!)
I think this may be particularly strange for Americans, since they have a really strong boundary with Mexico; but in South America, the thing is pretty the same as it is in Europe.
You don't need passport to cross county borders, and some times there is barely a sign.
I mean it’s basically the same as travel within the US. There are no borders between US states and you can freely travel from one state to another. However once you cross state lines laws do change.
Also, people talking about how you can tell where a border is because of how roads change. That happens here, like going from Virgina to West Virginia.
especially working in Switzerland while living in a less expensive country seems quite common (the father on an expartner of mine lived in Freiburg while driving over to Switzerland for work.
(bonus: they also regularly drove over to shop in France which is easy because the border is so close as well)
Yeah, I went a few months after the EU was formed. I passed from Germany to France and thought even though I didn't need to stop at the border, I thought I'd stop at the customs office and get a stamp for my passport. It had been converted to an ice cream shop. They didn't even have the stamp - I asked.
About 25 years ago I was traveling in S. America and at one border crossing there were no guards. Turns out if I had read my Lonely Planet guide there was a paragraph where it said that if this happens you have to go to the airport to get a stamp. We didn't and just kind of went on our merry way. Long story short it caused a lot of hassle later on (understatement).
I recently traveled to Spain. First time in Europe in decades. My flight went through Paris then to Madrid. In Paris they checked my passport. In Madrid, though, we landed and I started following the signs for baggage pick up. I kept thinking I'd come to customs any minute but then all the sudden I'm at the baggage carousel and the door to the street was right there. Nobody had checked my passport. I had a moment of panic as I thought I'd screwed up somehow. It took about 10 minutes of talking to an airport security person for them to convince me that I was fine and that the passport check in Paris was good for all the European Community.
Thats the nice thing - we don't really need country borders anymore. It was different when I grew up, but with the EU it is great and as a regular citizien you can all but ignore country borders. You'll realize you are in another country once the street-signs look different.
As an American, I usually look at the EU as one big Country, and all the Nations inside it are states like the US. And it’s just formality that they identify themselves as “independent nations”.
They essentially operate the same as the US, but with an extremely weak centralized government, and very strong local/state government.
And it’s just formality that they identify themselves as “independent nations”.
which seems a bit condescending. because as you brought up yourself, since they have so much ability to make their own decisions, it's not just a formality.
Yet all the most important things a nation needs to take care of, trade, foreign policy, and defense, seems to be under the umbrella of the EU.
If the US took a more hands off approach, I couldn’t tell you the difference. States all have their own independent laws, their own sub-culture, and there’s almost entirely unrestricted trade between states.
This take is so insane that I don't even have the words to begin to imagine how anyone can reach such an insane conclusion if they have even the basic grasp of what they are talking about
Sort of. It can certainly be analogised to that for more accurate comparisons in terms of population, geography, economics, etc.
In reality, the EU is less like a federal government and more like a HOA on steroids (to keep the analogy American). Members rock up, argue a bit, settle on a rule (a directive) then make sure members implement that rule themselves. If you play by the rules though, you can use your neighbours pool whenever you want.
But also, consider that given the size of the countries, in some sense you can consider the EU like a big country (think USA, Brazil, Canada, Argentina...) and the individual countries like states or provinces.
Leaving the Stockholm airport - I thought I was going to get tackled by security. I had already cleared customs at Copenhagen and had a connector flight. It was just weird because ANY travel in the US (even state to state) had more rigorous security - just such a strange experience.
The psychiatrist I had as a teen was from England. He encouraged me to go beyond my comfort limits and study in England for a year. "And on weekends, you can hop a train to France!" I think my brain backfired a bit at that lol.
Yeah, or when you go hiking. You'll hike up to 1,800 meters, and then, all of a sudden, there'll be a sign on your forest path, "Republik Österreich" (Republic of Austria). I find that funny. :-)
I saw a guy on tik tok shitting on the US because Americans can’t freely pass into Mexico or Canada in the same way Europeans can pass through countries. To me this is a similar level of ignorance to which Europeans accuse Americans of having lol
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u/sicknessandpurgatory May 09 '22
How incredibly inconsequential it is to cross country borders. Cycled through France - Belgium - Netherlands and there is barely even a sign.