Entry 7 (Dec 1, 2021)
As promised, my blog this month was supposed to be on travel visas and passports and documents and vaccines…all things anyone planning long-term travel must know and do and study. And I was to lay it all out for you so you’ll know what to do when you travel around the world. Instead, I’m going to tell you something else you may not know about. We certainly didn’t, and it’s thrown a bit of a wrench in our plans.
I sat down on November 28th to continue with my “travel visa research” and immediately hit a HUGE snag. And not one I foresaw. I thought for sure I’d discover something like our travel visa to Nepal will expire before we get there, or we can’t enter Israel after a trip to Morocco…something exotic like that. (I haven’t finished researching that, so those could still be issues.)
INSTEAD: when double checking that we would NOT need travel visas in Europe, I ran into this “no, please tell me it ain’t so” glitch: the Schengen Area’s 90-day rule! Have you heard of it? I never had, but of course, I never planned to spend 6 months in Europe before. Excuse the expletive, but #$@!%! (Translation: FIDDLESTICKS!)
So, what is it exactly? The Schengen Area is comprised of 26 European countries that have officially abolished all passport and other types of border control at their mutual borders. The area mostly functions as a single jurisdiction for international travel purposes, with a common visa policy.
Very convenient for crossing borders in Europe. HOWEVER, the glitch is this: You may only stay in the “area” for 90 days total in a given 180-day period. WHAT?! That’s tough when 5 of your 6 European countries are in the Schengen Area: Norway, Estonia, Switzerland, Portugal, and Spain. And since we all can do the math, that equals 150 days…not 90! Ugh!
What to do?! What to do?! There are ways around it which would mean jumping through too many hoops (like work visas, extended travel visas, student visas, give up your first child, etc.), so, we need to come up with another plan. We can drop two of those Schengen Area countries and go elsewhere. Or, we can re-route and do three countries in 90 days, then return 3 months later after the 180-day limit to pick up the other two. But that would mean a lot of crisscrossing around the Eastern Hemisphere. Sigh. I’m not keen on either of these ideas, but we have to make something work.
I won’t bore you with me “thinking through all the possibilities.” So, I’ll do the crying and scheming and gnashing of teeth until I have a plan and then report it to you next month…as well as the travel visa obstacles I thought I would be reporting this month.
Oh, the joys of travel! Take note. You may one day need to know this.
6 months and counting!
Hasta Luego.
Pam
(PS: Really, any challenge we face is fine. It will be okay. As I said in earlier posts, flexibility is key for this journey. If we can’t deal with an obstacle 6 months out from the comfort of our home, then how will we deal with our lodging not being available, or flights being canceled, or our luggage being transported to Antarctica? This is what stories are made of. BRING IT ON!!!)
Santorini, Greece; 1984
“Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures.” – Lovelle Drachman
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