4-month trip through southern Europe?

From Dave: "There is a 4-month trip through southern Europe that's all planned out in my mind. Don't know when it will happen, but it will happen. Of course, I've got some other great trips planned in my mind also!"

Dave's four months is the number that has aged, and it is worth knowing why before you plan the same trip.

If you are not an EU citizen, the Schengen area allows ninety days in any rolling one hundred and eighty. Southern Europe is almost entirely inside it: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia and Malta are all in. So a four-month run through those countries is thirty days over, and the overstay is not a formality. It carries a fine and an entry ban, and the exit check is where it surfaces.

The fix is easy if you plan it in rather than discover it. Spend a month outside the zone in the middle: Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey and Morocco are all cheap, all next door and none of them count against the ninety. Albania in particular gives most nationalities a year. Do that and the four-month trip is legal, and probably better, because the non-Schengen Balkans are the part of southern Europe that still feels the way Dave was imagining.

The rail pass side of it is unchanged: the pass covers the trains, the seat reservations are extra, and the country-by-country fees are here. Italy, France and Spain are where they bite.

Posted 30 April 2003 in BootsnAll Travel Community · updated by Chris