Modern adventures - crossing the border

[RangerWickett]

I'm running a modern game that might involve lots of travel to different countries. One segment in particular I would like to be a road trip across Europe. Could you give me what knowledge you have about the procedures of crossing borders into different nations? I personally have only been outside of the U.S. for about 10 minutes, when I walked across a bridge in west Texas, over the Rio Grande, into Mexico. It was the middle of a desert, and there was just a dinky little town on the far side, which had no border patrol that I could see.

 

[BobROE]

When I crossed from portugal into spain there was no sign or anything, just drive over the bridge over a river and you're there. And I think most of Western Europe is probably like that.

 

[S'mon]

Western Europe generally has no border controls at land borders, certainly intra-EU and even going outside EU. Last year we took a car ferry England-Germany, there was a check point at the German port, but then we drove Germany-Denmark-Sweden-Norway and there were no checks at any of the borders.

 

[MonsterMash]

Within the EU the border controls are limited and have been for a long time (I remember travelling by train in 1990 and going through from Italy to France not having to do any more than get the passport out of the bag without them even checking it.

I suspect if you are of non-caucasian appearance YMMV.

Once you get to the boundaries of the EU the border checks really start up and a lot of the countries like Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, etc require visas, check things like the bbc website and CIA world fact book for details.