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To Germany with poverty

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Elizzybeth:
Oh, I see.  You're probably better off this way, anyway.  The family is much more likely to think of you as a real person rather than just the nanny if you're a friend of a friend.

Schengen visas basically allow transit to and among the Schengen states, which include most EU members.  Being an American passport holder, I was entitled to a 3-month tourist Schengen visa.  Though I could've theoretically remained in the country and incurred a visa overstay, the penalty if one is caught can include a hefty fine, a black mark in your passport, and / or getting banned from the Schengen states for five years (depending on the seriousness of your offense and on the speed with which you pay the original fine).  In past years, it's been easy to slip past border control, but they've been working hard to make the system more electronically integrated (they scan your passport at the control desk, and the number of days you've been in the EU shows up on a screen) and harder to beat.  Again, you shouldn't have any of these problems as an EU citizen, but it never hurts to be familiar with the visa laws when traveling internationally.  Being interrogated by border control officers is hard enough when it's in your first language!

Barmymoo:
That sounds scary and official, I'll look into it to be on the safe side but I'd be staying a maximum of one month anyway, so hopefully it won't be an issue. I think since I'm not getting paid for it I'd be there "on holiday" rather than "to work" so presumably no problems.

The only time I've been stopped by customs is when I was on an orchestra trip, and we accidentally ended up in Switzerland on the way to Italy. We were meant to be going through Germany but a road was closed and we got (very) lost. Sitting for two hours in the middle of the night at Swiss border control watching the coach in front being systematically stripped down was rather unnerving, I'm so glad they eventually just let us through.

supersheep:
Due to being a EUvian, I think that you could just up and go to work anywhere in the EU without any fancy government stuff. That's what Schengen allows, as far as I know. Britain and Ireland aren't actually fully in it, but the same rules apply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

Barmymoo:
Isn't there something that means all EU people except us crazy island-dwellers no longer need passports and basically Europe is meant to be one big supercountry? I've always wondered how borders actually work, not having any border control over here. I mean, do they have someone posted on every inch of land between the two countries? Is there a big wall? How do they stop people just wandering from France to Germany or so forth? Or do they not? Sorry to sound rather stupid, but since here in the UK there's a very blurred line between Wales, England and Scotland I find the idea of totally seperate countries that are basically the same landmass quite hard to grasp.

StaedlerMars:
There's no such thing as borders. It's kind of great, cause you have these large border posts from back in the day, but no one is posted on them. Kind of spooky at the same time. The only place you notice anything resembling a border patrol is in airports and that's more a formality, if you're a european citizin all you have to do is flash any form of id and you can go through. So in short, they don't keep people from wandering from France into Germany.

In other countries (I'm thinking of the US here) there's actually a fence along the border I think.

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