Schengen and the disappearance of European passport stamps

by Alex Robertson Textor on


Creative new use for border crossing posts at German/Austrian border.

In the late 1980s, an American spending a summer traveling across Europe with a Eurailpass would see his or her passport stamped possibly dozens of times. With a few exceptions, every time a border was crossed, an immigration agent would pop his or her head into a train compartment, look at everyone’s passports, in most cases stamp them, and move on. Every Eastern Bloc country required visas, some of which could be obtained at the border and others of which had to be applied for in advance.

Today, an American can enter the Schengen zone in Helsinki, fly to Oslo and then on to Amsterdam, proceed by train through Belgium, France, Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, then by bus to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and then by ferry back to Helsinki before catching a flight to Athens and landing in Greece without once needing to submit a passport to a border guard’s scrutiny.

The development of the Schengen agreement across Europe has altered the geopolitical map of the continent in many ways. For tourists, the development of the Schengen zone has simplified travel by drastically reducing the number of times a passport can be checked and stamped as national borders are crossed.

The Schengen Agreement is named after the town of Schengen in Luxembourg. It was here in 1985 that five countries-Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany, and France-signed an agreement to essentially create borderless travel between them. A model for this agreement had been created years before by the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), which eliminated border controls back in 1948. The Nordic countries also did away with internal border posts, in 1958.

In 1995, the five original Schengen countries plus Portugal and Spain inaugurated the zone. In 1997, Austria and Italy joined. Greece followed in 2000 and the five Nordic countries joined in 2001. In late 2007, nine more countries joined the Schengen zone; most recently, Switzerland signed up in 2008.


Abandoned border crossing between Slovakia and Hungary.

Today, 22 European countries are part of Schengen. Every European Union country (save the UK, Ireland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Cyprus) belongs. Other members include EU holdouts Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland. The European microstates present a few complications. Monaco’s borders are administered by France, which makes the tiny principality a part of Schengen, while Liechtenstein’s accession, approved by the European Parliament in February, is pending. San Marino and the Vatican are de facto versus official members, while mountainous, landlocked Andorra remains outside of the zone altogether.

There are five EU countries not currently part of the Schengen zone. The UK and Ireland (as well as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) operate a Schengen-like agreement called the Common Travel Area. Neither country is obligated to join the zone.

Romania, Bulgaria, and Cyprus, however, are all bound by treaty to eventually join. Romania has fulfilled all the criteria for joining Schengen and Bulgaria is close to fulfillment as well. These two countries will accede together, likely later this year. Cyprus presents a more complicated situation given the division of the island between the Republic of Cyprus in the south and the largely unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the north.

With the coming accession of the Western Balkans to the European Union, the Schengen zone will almost definitely continue to grow. Might it one day cover the entire landmass of Europe? Check back in two decades.

[Images: top image Flickr | Mike Knell; middle image Flickr | jczart]

El Salvador: No visa required

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Last week, on assignment in Guatemala and El Salvador, I took a luxury bus between Guatemala City and San Salvador. The bus company in question, Pullmantur, operates a fantastic service.

$35 got me transportation in a comfortable seat, along with breakfast (eggs, refried beans, and delicious, sweet fried plantains, as well as juice) and coffee later in the morning. There is a wi-fi connection on board as well, although during my trip this particular feature was not functioning. (Pullmantur also operates a more luxurious class of travel between Guatemala City and San Salvador for $52 per person, with a more extensive meal service.)

Yet one question remained unanswered as the bus lumbered toward the border. What precisely were the entrance requirements for US citizens entering El Salvador?

On the subject of entry and exit requirements, the US Department of State’s Travel.State.Gov site has the following to say:

To enter the country, U.S. citizens must present a current U.S. passport and either a Salvadoran visa or a one-entry tourist card. The tourist card may be obtained from immigration officials for a ten-dollar fee upon arrival in country.

Later in the description, we learn about the existence, since 2006, of the Central America Border Control Agreement, which covers El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. This agreement allows citizens of these four countries to cross borders within the region without having to complete “entry and exit formalities at immigration checkpoints” and goes on to state:

In isolated cases, the lack of clarity in the implementing details of the CA-4 Border Control Agreement has caused temporary inconvenience to some travelers and has resulted in others being fined more than one hundred dollars or detained in custody for 72 hours or longer.

Reading through the State Department’s materials, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that I’d have to purchase a $10 tourist card to enter El Salvador. As the bus waited on the Guatemalan side of the Valle Nuevo border crossing, I asked a bus attendant where I should purchase my tarjeta de turista. Her perplexed response: There is no such thing as a tourist card. I at first wondered if my question confused the attendant because Americans were infrequent passengers on Pullmantur buses. This theory was dashed a few minutes later, when I saw a number of US passports among the stack being collected for exit processing from Guatemala.

A half-hour later our passports were returned to us with an exit stamp and we were on to the Salvadorean side. A young Salvadorean border guard boarded the bus, greeted each passenger individually, glanced at our passports, and logged each of us by citizenship on a clipboard-attached document. He didn’t demand that we purchase a tourist card, and the bus left in short order. It appeared that there were no tourist cards to be purchased at all.

The upshot: in El Salvador, no visa is required for American citizens, and, in fact, no tourist card is needed either–for land entry from a neighboring country, at least. Unless my experience was an isolated incident, the State Department’s information is misleading. Travel.State.Gov is an undeniably key resource for travelers offering all sorts of important information for tourists. In this instance, however, its information needs to be revised.

El Salvador has gotten a little attention in the travel media over the last few decades. Be on the lookout this spring for some new El Salvador coverage here at Gadling.

[Photo: Flickr | bryansblog]

Azerbaijan’s visa hassles

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Prior to mid-October, as Andrew Mueller notes in today’s Monocolumn, visitors entering Azerbaijan without visas at capital Baku’s Heydar Aliyev Airport had to engage in a bizarre hop from booth to booth to obtain their visas. First, they had to stand in a line to get a passport stamp, then stand in another line to apply for a visa, then wait for the visa to be issued, and then stand in line again to have the visa inspected.

Unnecessary hassles like these are reminiscent of Soviet-era bureaucracy. They feel to many travelers like punishment, even when the reciprocal hassles (those faced by citizens of the country in question trying to enter the visitor’s country) are harsher and require greater advance planning.

Then, in the middle of October, Azerbaijan suddenly changed its visa regime, requiring visitors to obtain visas at the country’s embassies in advance. This requirement is not particularly annoying for tourists, who usually have time to drop their passports off at embassies prior to travel, but it’s a huge hassle for business travelers who often need to travel at the drop of a hat.

Mueller instructively contrasts Azerbaijan’s visa regime tightening with neighbor Georgia’s loosening of visa requirements. Georgia now offers visa-free access to the country for citizens of close to half the world’s nations, and the length of stay following entrance has been extended to a year from 90 days.

Here’s the rub: Azerbaijan is perfectly situated to take advantage of new waves of tourism. Interest in the country is growing, air routes from Europe are quite good, facilities for visitors are expanding, and oil money has Baku flush with venues for visitors to spend money.

But if the country makes it harder for people to visit, fewer will show up.

For the record, Monocle’s daily Monocolumn is a fantastic briefing courtesy of the magazine’s correspondents and contributors from around the world.

[Story source: Andrew Mueller, Monocle; photo credit: indigoprime / Flickr]

Finding the expat community and what travelers can learn from them

by Meg Nesterov on

No matter how well-traveled you are, moving to a foreign country and living as an expat is a whole new ballgame. Your priorities and standards change, and hours that you may have spent as a traveler in a museum or wandering a beach are now spent in as an expat search of an alarm clock or trying to distinguish between eight types of yogurt. You become like a child again: unable to speak in complete sentences, easily confused and lost, and constantly asking questions.

Enter the experienced expats who can help navigate visa issues, teach you dirty words in foreign languages, and tell you where to buy pork in a Muslim country. Finding the local expat community is not about refusing to integrate or assimilate in your new country, but rather meeting a group of like-minded people who understand what you are going through and can provide a bridge to the local community and culture.

So what can the traveler learn from an expat? How about where to buy souvenirs that are actually made nearby and well priced, restaurants not mentioned in any guidebooks, bizarre-but-true stories behind local places and rituals, and inside perspectives on community news and events? And those are just the Istanbul bloggers.

Read on for tips on finding the blogs and a few of the must-reads for travelers.Where to find the expats:

  • Expat forums such as ExpatFocus, InterNations, and Expat Blog are good starting points for finding and connecting with expats, though some forums may be more active than others.
  • Local English-language publications: Many big cities have a Time Out magazine in English and local language, often with frequently-updated blogs or links to other sites. In Istanbul, the newspaper Today’s Zaman has an “expat zone” full of useful articles.
  • Guidebook writers are often current or former expats, so if you read a helpful guide or travel article, it’s worth a Google search to find if they have a blog or Twitter account.

Some stellar expat bloggers around the globe:

  • Carpetblogger: sarcastic, insightful blogger based in Istanbul but with lots of coverage on Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Indonesia. Stand-out post: expat guide to duty free shopping.
  • Miss Expatria: prolific writer and instantly-loveable American in Rome, a joy to read even if you have no plans to visit Italy, but you might find yourself buying tickets after reading about her life. Stand-out post: Italian idioms.
  • CNNGo: great round-up of finds in Asia from Bangkok to Tokyo with everything from restaurant reviews to a look at Tokyo’s elevator ladies. Stand-out post: Japan’s oddest vending machines, a favorite topic of Mike Barish, who has chronicled some of the vending machine beverages for your reading pleasure..
  • Bermuda Shorts: Enviable (and crushworthy, too) travel writer David LaHuta covers all the goings-on in Bermuda and all things Dark n Stormy-related. Stand-out post: name suggestions for new Indiana Jones movie set in Bermuda Triangle.
  • Fly Brother: Series of funny and poignant misadventures in Brazil and around the world from the African American perspective. Stand-out post: how an afternoon of seemingly simple errands can take up to seven hours.

The next time you plan a trip abroad, consider reaching out to a fellow American (or Canadian, Brit, etc.) for some advice or even a coffee meeting (assuming you aren’t a total psycho). I, for one, am happy to offer Istanbul tips and tricks, and I’d be even more amenable to helping a traveler who comes bearing Boar’s Head bacon.

Any expat blogs you follow or travel tips you’ve learned from them? Expat bloggers want to share your websites and your insights for travelers? Leave a note in the comments below.

Gadlinks for Wednesday 7.22.09

by Brenda Yun on


There’s nothing really great about summer coming to a close for many. For me, however, this is the time of year I look forward to. It’s time to pack my bags and hit the road! Come Thursday, I’ll be on a plane to California to spend nearly the whole month road tripping and writing. While I look forward to this time, though, there are other things I have to consider. For instance….




  • Before you hit the road, you have to break it to your loved ones, which is never (ever) easy. Here are a few tips on telling friends and family of your travels. [via BootsNAll]
  • Traveling abroad inevitably means arranging for your travel visas, which my cousin quickly realized can be quite a headache. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of his trip to D.C. to acquire visas.
  • This is the best time of the year to see Europe, and if you’re there, you should check out these scenic mountain railways. [via OpenTravel]
  • The keyword this summer has been green tourism, and this article muses on all the new hype on this mode of travel. [via GoGreenTravelGreen]

‘Til tomorrow, have a great evening!

More Gadlinks HERE.