Schengen Hopscotch

It was time to bounce from Rome to London. But why did we decide to jump across the Continent, especially when we’re trying to avoid flying?

Two words: the Schengen Area. This is a subject you will probably never need to know about, but if you’re interested in Problems You Only Wish You Had…read on!

You probably know that one of the big advantages of the EU is that you can move between the member countries without having to show your passport or go through customs. That’s true. (At least in theory. I hear that you may still occasionally be asked for your passport at some border crossings, though we haven’t yet experienced that.) But that arrangement is actually by virtue of something called the Schengen Agreement, crafted in 1985. The Schengen free-movement zone includes almost all EU countries—but not Ireland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, and Romania. (Ireland opted out, while the other four will be joining soon—when the other member countries let them.) And of course, the UK, which just exited the EU, isn’t part of it either. But the zone does includes some other non-EU countries, including Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland (as well as Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican City). In other words, the Schengen Area doesn’t precisely line up with Europe or the EU, which is terribly confusing for…well, probably everybody. But especially tourists like us.

Moving between the many small countries of Europe without having to go through customs at each border is wonderful, of course. And Americans can enter without a visa. Awesome, right? Problem is, you can only stay for three months—and then you have to leave the zone for three months before you can return. Those limits apply to the entire Schengen Area, not just individual countries. So if you want to spend more than three months in Europe—as we were determined to do—you have to get creative. This is a problem (solidly in the category for First World problems!) we wrestled with mightily before we departed, and after a lot of research, it seemed there were a few solutions:

• Get a special visa from some member country that allows you to stay for longer. This is how students, retirees, and anybody working abroad usually does it. But what about tourists like us? In the months before we departed, we studied options in France, Spain, Italy, and Greece. All had visas we could apply for, but none of them made it easy, and the pandemic was complicating things further. Some countries wanted proof that you had medical insurance, wouldn’t be getting a job there, and had enough money to support yourself—which meant having like $50,000 in your bank account. Some wanted to know what your permanent address in their country would be, and would try to verify that you were staying primarily in that country, not moving around the EU. Some required you to apply for the visa after you were already there, which could take months and was not guaranteed. Spain in particular required that each of us making an appointment to visit their consulate in LA prior to departure, and would absolutely, positively not assist you by phone—but though we tried for months, we couldn’t ever get an appointment via their online system. Even if there was a way to get a visa, it just wasn’t worth this amount of time and effort!
• Get citizenship in a member country. Our friends Lars & Melissa actually did this. Though he’s never lived there, Lars secured citizenship from Germany for himself and his kids by descent through his parents. Once you’re a citizen of an EU member country, you’re effectively a citizen of the EU and can move around the Schengen Area without restrictions. This allowed them to relocate to Italy indefinitely. But neither Amy nor I had any avenues to do this.
• Buy citizenship in a member country. As I described in a previous post, Portugal offers a “golden visa” problem that rewards significant investment—i.e. buying a house or starting a business there—with a visa and a path to citizenship. Not just for you, but your entire family. Both Amy and her dad toyed with the idea of of buying a home in Portugal, where you can live quite well on very little money. (No, we’re definitely not wealthy enough to have a second home…we would have had to sold our farmhouse in SB.) Crazy, right? But we didn’t do this either.
• Ignore the restrictions and overstay the three month limit. People do it all the time. But if you get caught, they’ll put you on the first plane outta there, at your expense, and you’re barred from the Schengen Area for ten years. We decided not to risk this.
• Bounce out of the Schengen Area every three months. We had to settle for doing what most people do—playing Schengen hopscotch, working out an itinerary that takes you out of the zone every other quarter. That means either staying in some of the non-Schengen countries, or leaving Europe entirely.

In our case, we had to exit in late June, but wanted to spend the summer in Europe if we could. So we consulted the many online calculators that help you determine the date you need to leave the Schengen Area and the date you can return (because it’s actually not that easy to figure out). Then we planned a three month jaunt to the UK, Ireland, Croatia, and Montenegro (next door to Croatia and not an EU member country), to fill the time until we could re-enter the zone in late September.

And what about when we have to leave again, after Christmas? Still to be determined! Amy has floated quite a few ideas, including Cyprus, the Azores, Morocco, South Africa, Argentina, Australia & Thailand—note the emphasis on countries where it is sunny and warm in December! But we’re a long way from figuring that out, as we haven’t even finished figuring out our itinerary in Montenegro, where we’ll be next week! So stay tuned…