Timeline for Is there anything like Schengen area anywhere else in the world?
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9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 19, 2021 at 10:55 | comment | added | Matthew | @MSalters: Your concern for driver safety is appreciated, but I was on a bus. ;-D And actually, I got on that bus (following my friend) without realizing that it was going to the Netherlands, which caused me serious difficulties when I arrived and discovered that the public toilets required payment - in florins. Never have I been so glad to find a McDonalds, where the toilet attendant did accept Deutschmarks! But the fact that I could cross the border by accident, without ID, shows how different Schengen is from the North American context (as phoog rightly argues). | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 15:24 | comment | added | phoog | @hojusaram indeed. Unguarded crossings between the US and Canada are similar to the Schengen area in one respect, but completely unlike it in most respects. One thing that people often confuse is the freedom of movement afforded to EU citizens (which applies across external Schengen borders) and the freedom of movement afforded to everyone inside the Schengen area (which applies only to internal borders). But the former US-Canada situation is analogous to neither, really, as it was more about allocation of resources to enforcement than about freedom of movement. | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 13:32 | comment | added | hojusaram | I was in US on a visa pre 2009 and definitely required a visa to go to Canada. | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 12:25 | comment | added | user4556274 | I recall completely unguarded crossings--not on major routes, but on small roads in rural areas. Just a sign to the effect "you are now entering Canada [United States]. If you have anything to declare, please report to customs station at [town] or [town]." | |
| Mar 18, 2021 at 12:16 | comment | added | MSalters | @Matthew: I hope you remembered to adjust your speed. Driving 150 in Germany is a bit on the slow side, driving 150 in the Netherlands will cost you your license. More seriously, new crossings (such as the A61) indeed have been built entirely without facilities for border controls, not even for trucks. | |
| Mar 17, 2021 at 7:56 | comment | added | Bregalad | And when we crossed from Switzerland to France, we only know because the signs themselves are different, even though the language is the same :) | |
| Mar 17, 2021 at 2:34 | comment | added | Matthew | This is not really comparable to Schengen. When I crossed from Germany to the Netherlands in the 1990s, I only knew because the language on the signage had changed. There was literally no border post whatsoever. | |
| Mar 17, 2021 at 0:10 | comment | added | Flydog57 | I grew up in Canada in the 1960s, an hour's drive from the US border. We were very rarely asked for paperwork. When I met my (now) wife in the early 1980s, it was still like that. But, her family immigrated from Egypt. They spoke fluent, unaccented French, but they were visibly Arab. I remember arriving at a border crossing with her and her parents, sitting in the back seat behind her father (the driver). As we were driving up, her father said "everyone get their drivers license" (odd to me). When we got there, the guard said "I need IDs from you and you and you", skipping me. | |
| Mar 16, 2021 at 16:20 | history | answered | Ryan_L | CC BY-SA 4.0 |