customs and immigration, for the record

[gusl]

In Europe, customs is done at the final destination. This confused me. In Canada, USA and Brazil, it's done at the first place you land.

Immigration: arriving in Calgary, the officer asked why I renewed my visa in Seattle last month, and said that the study permit would have sufficed. This means that, as long as the Study Permit is valid, a valid visa isn't necessary to enter Canada!

Comments

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Customs is done upon entering the destination country. If you land in Milan and are flying on to Athens, you get a quickie passport control in Milan but you only clear customs in Athens, because Italy and Greece are separate countries. If you land in New York and are flying on to Pittsburgh, you clear customs in NY because your destination is the US.

Likely you only noticed this because one doesn't normally fly from Amsterdam to Utrecht.

[widdertwin.livejournal.com]

I only noticed that fairly recently as well, and it threw me for a loop. I was flying from Reykjavik to Oslo and could have, if I'd wanted, gotten away with all varieties of terrorism, so lax were the security measures. I thought it had something to do with both countries being part of the Schengen Agreement, but I don't even know anymore. Crazy Europeans...

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

that makes sense.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

But it's weird that people traveling Munich-Amsterdam would be forced to go through customs, since there are no land borders. How does customs avoid checking MUC-AMS travelers? And if they do get a free pass, this system is vulnerable to passengers passing things to each other at the airport / inside the airplane.

Also, I went through the unsecured part of Munich airport, and could easily have flooded Germany with Canadian booze. :-P

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I love this image:

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

and this may be a useful companion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_with_flags.png

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Hmm... you have a point that schengen makes things weird.