Crossing Borders

Don't know which 6 countries but if you are in the Schengen area, there are no borders between the countries.

The only time I have had my luggage checked (search) was when I came back to the US. It is harder getting back into the US than it is getting into most of Europe. Some of the eastern countries -- Turkey, Russia, etc., have border control but most of Europe is pretty loose/

I will be going from the Netherlands t0 Germany - Austria - Italy - Switzerland and then France. I am most curious about getting my passport stamped. I want a stamp from each country. Any word on that?

Most countries no longer stamp. YOu will have to go through border checks going into Netherlands, into Switzerland, and then into France. That's all.

And since you'll be on a tour bus, they may just come on board to check everyone's passport and not make you get off.

You will go through border controls at your first arrival in Europe, when you enter Switzerland and at the first country after Switzerland. At the other crossings it is like going from one state to another in the US.

As other have said, few passport checks on your route. And don't expect passport stamps, either, I'm sorry to say. They're getting increasingly rare.

We only went through border control when we flew into France and then Italy. When we rode a train across the border into Switzerland, nothing happened.

When we drove into Switzerland from Germany we took a back road (didn't want to pay the toll on the main road!)and didn't even have to stop. The people at the toll plaza told us how to do this. We returned the same way.

The last vestiges of passport stamps within the EU were the non-Schengen members of central and eastern Europe, such as the Baltic Republics, Czech Republic, Slovakia, etc when you crossed the border via train. Now that the Schengen Group has extended to cover all of the EU, you'll only have a passport stamp going to Russia, Belarus (both of which require a visa anyway), Croatia, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Ukraine and Moldova, and even in some of these, you may not get a stamp.

Hey thanks for all the info - what a bummer though - getting your passport stamped is part of the adventure. Oh well.

If you are on RS tour, I doubt you will have your pass port checked at any border. I didn't last year going from Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland. No stamps . . . a thing of the past.