Let’s talk about borders, travel across them and the different ways you can DO that!
In the United States we have little opportunity to drive across a border unless we go NORTH to Canada or SOUTH to Mexico. For those in the proximate states, we know the process, but in Europe (and other parts of the world) things are different. Much different! You can cross a dozen different countries within the span of a few hundred miles.
For our side trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, from Split, I knew that we had to cross a 20 km stretch of Bosnia- Herzegovina, which is a weird thought to begin with. You cross into a small section of land and 15 minutes later you exit back to the same country you left from. The city in between is called Neum and as we crossed into B-H we entered Neum, had to go through ONE border check and a few minutes later had to go through ANOTHER one as we crossed through what is called No Man’s Land. Usually a border is, well, on the border, so one crossing gate does it, but not here. One stop to enter, one to leave. We also went through Montenegro and that was much easier.
That’s weirdness #1.
Weirdness #2 was leaving Croatia, an EU country, but NOT part of the Schengen Zone (if you want to know what that means I have a Special Report posted in this blog) and entering Hungary. The bus stopped at the border, all our passports were collected, then we all had to exit the bus to retrieve them one at a time. Thank God there were only a dozen passengers; imagine doing this at midnight with a full busload!
Until the past few years my main mode of travel was planes. Over the last year we have ferried several times, including international borders, and it’s a piece of cake. Crossing borders via train is pretty easy too, especially if you stay within the EU, then it’s a non-issue. But when you leave the EU and go to a non-Schengen country you get the scrutiny. Now I have international bus travel experience on my list and it’s actually very nice. We discovered that train travel in Croatia is very bad and to be avoided, and trying to book tickets online is impossible. When we got to Hungary we were told that the bus out of Hungary is better and cheaper than the train, so that’s what we did. Those who know said that 1) train travel was much more effective in the central to northern parts of Europe, ie, Austria and north and 2) due to budgetary cuts many national railroads are NOT what they used to be and some are now privatized. We have met some awesome people on our journeys, some Americans and others not, and it’s great to share our experience and lessons.
When you think of timely travel and efficiency the German train system comes to mind, but we were told- by German citizens- that trains were not maintained, nor the tracks, all in the interest of saving money. Scary.
That’s the latest up to now, which is Austria and beyond, which is where we are currently. We decided to NOT go into the Scandinavian countries due to time and too much hassle and instead focus on less countries, more time in each, and more fun. It will be train when we can and to use our Eurail pass, some buses in there and maybe a ferry in the mix, too. We have to be in Madrid August 20 so we’re filling in the gap until then, and after a two day event there we have about 2.5 weeks until I return to the US on Sept 8.
When I started this blog it was designed to teach everyone how to Travel Younger, like the Millennials. No question, the “young” handle uncertainty better than those of us of age, and they can be more flexible. Case in point: we arrived in Vienna Sunday afternoon at about 4:00 and had no room. We also had very sketchy mobile service and no wifi, so we were struck down in our tracks! Mind you, that was NORMAL 20 plus years ago, but today we are victims of our smart phones as well as beneficiaries. It all worked out, we got a great room, but many Boomers might not react well to the uncertainty, so we’re trying to take that uncertainty AWAY by sharing our experiences.
Hope you’re enjoying our current travels and your future travels! Questions, comments, let me hear them.
#bordercrossing, #borders, #passport, #visas
