i know, and even, i once rode a coach from amsterdam to rome, we crossed borders at belgium, france, luxembourg, switzerland and then to italy, and at france we had to do a passport checkpoint, i think also at switzerland, i forget exactly, but definitely france, and me and my dutch friend and a black dude with a prosthetic leg were singled out for drug search as well

oh, nice to not need a visa still but every border crossing is going to become like the old days

in any case, even outside the EU it's the same, as EU citizens have 90 day free visa, turkey as well, probably others too, i think ukraine for sure, with an EU passport you can just drop in and pop out to many countries but all of them border check border check log record log record "oh you loook suspicious we are going to single you out for a pat down"

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I understand the convenience of being able to freely move between EU territories if you're a legal citizen. However, if I'm not mistaken, this action by Germany is just applying to non-citizen illegal immigrants, right?

nah, it used to be you could just drive through the borders without saying boo to anyone, if the border was between two schengen countries... like for example i recall crossing through germany to netherlands at Vaals, and slovenia to hungary, and there was no checkpoint anymore, or at least they were minimally manned...

i got picked up after crossing into hungary by a military police truck with a border cop officer inside, as i tried to hail a ride towards budapest or at least i intended to head towards romania, and was detained for 12 hours, but it wasn't because of the checkpoint it was a hungarian border police patrol

and outside schengen some borders are pretty loose too, i mean, this was 2014, between bulgaria and romania near Vidin and Bassarabia, there was no manned checkpoint, and i also got stopped by a border police patrol but they didn't care, and that was after getting told to climb a fence just over the danube by a romanian border guard who was stationed in a little cubicle by the side of the road, i could have walked further to the road checkpoint but lol what am i gonna do if i want to go to romania and romanian border cop says jump a fence, who am i to argue??? haha

yes, i also crossed into switzerland and back from germany at one point, also was not required to show my passport, there was a checkpoint but nobody stopping anyone

hah and just to add more, i crossed out of serbia in a round about way one time, climbing through hills and mountain trails and eventually get stopped by a border guard and again detained but no arrest or fine or anything, they only wanted me to show them where i breached their precious line... it was pretty funny, actually... even, the two cops on the team that were handling me, next day after release on the way to Sofia they give me a ride in their private car lol

but yeah, maybe balkans is a bit different, but it's only a little bit different, the borders between balkans countries are easy if you are white, more or less, maybe extra if you are tan and blue eyes, because that's a common thing there, and extra points if you can speak any of their languages, though they can be a bit cranky if you speak the *neighbour* language because fuck them neighbours and their kaimakchalan lol