bon voyage is three weeks away and I would like to re-confirm what I've picked up from this forum regarding customs. The only place we will need to deal with this would be when we land in Glasgow (from Philadelphia). We then take a train to London, fly from there to Amsterdam, train to Paris, Fuessen, Venice, Florence and Rome. We then fly to Athens. Am I correct in understanding that we can just walk off the train/plane with our carryon and be on our merry way!
thanks
To add a bit to earlier posts, Yes, you will go through passport control on arrival in Scotland, and again when you arrive in Amsterdam.
You will also incur some type of passport control or check leaving London as well. Any other flights of course you will at least have some security checks.
No.
At Glasgow, you will go through passport control and customs. (Customs is usually just a walk through).
You will then go through passport control and customs (again a walk through) when you get to Amsterdam as this is where you enter Schengen. (The UK is not part of Schengen.) After that, it should be smooth sailing.
There is a difference between going thru customs and going thru immigration. If I understood my own experience correctly, I only went thru customs in Boston on my return trip, but went thru immigration on my arrival in Frankfurt, again in Munich before boarding the flight back, then again in Boston. We were on a river cruise, and we were told that immigration boarded the ship when we passed into Germany - but our presence and passports were not required - I think they only reviewed the ship's passenger list.
Maybe I am confused, so I anxious to hear from the others.
thanks for the replies.
To elaborate on what the previous poster mentioned;
Customs is about what stuff you are moving across borders whereas immigration is about people moving across borders.
If your stuff crosses borders either with you or on its own, such as mailed home, it will go through customs. Customs officials have the right to examine your stuff to see if it complies with what you are allowed to move over borders.
Individual countries all have customs officers. They are pretty obvious when you go in or out of Schengen, Ireland, the UK, and the US. Even if you don't see them as you travel from Schengen country to Schengen country they are around, sometimes in plain clothes.
Immigration is all about you moving from country to country and whether or not you are entitled to. Again they are most visible in the places noted above, but every country has them.
The two branches are usually spoken of together but I hope you can see that they are really different functions.
In the UK, when you land, you usually claim your bags then see the immigration officer. After they stamp your passport you walk down a faceless passageway with some one way mirrors behind which are most of the customs officials, perhaps with one or two in the passageway. If none of them pull you in, or unless you have something to declare, you go through some one-way doors and are in the public area of the airport where, as you say, you are on your merry way.
My memory, a few years old now, is that US customs and immigration is a pretty rigorous process. I remember customs finding an orange seed that was in my bag and confiscating that.
Also make sure that your passport is available when you cross a border by rail. I was checked by roving police on a train crossing from Luxembourg into France last week, and have been checked several times crossing borders by rail in the past, Schengen or not.
"In the UK, when you land, you usually claim your bags then see the immigration officer"
??? Passport control/immigration - baggage reclaim - customs.
If you don't have to show passports within Europe anymore, does that mean that when traveling on a night train the attendant will NOT need to hold onto your passport (sleeping in locked compartments)?
Correct, the night train attendants don't hold-on to passports anymore.
According to The Man in Seat 61 ( and what he doesn't know about trains doesn't bear knowing) they do still take passports on the Palatino to Rome.
It's only very recently that the practice stopped. Most night trains have to pass through Switzerland; as CH was not a member of Schengen attendants need to collect passports. Last year when the Swiss joined, there was no longer a need.
They still collect passport on night trains that go through Switzerland. I took a night train from Rome to Paris in January and I had to hand over my passport for the night.
