I don’t consider myself to be a seasoned traveler, though I’ve been blessed to have a lot of opportunities to go overseas. But when I’ve done my solo travels, inevitably there is a point in the trip where I do something air-headed – usually in the airport and when I am sleep deprived!

The most recent example was this summer, on my Eastern Europe trip. I was a solo traveler meeting a group of strangers to tour through Prague, Krakow, Slovakia and Budapest – very much out of my comfort zone for an anxious and shy introvert!

What I was most anxious about was airport logistics. My flights there were Milwaukee to Atlanta, Atlanta to Amsterdam, and Amsterdam to Prague- a long trip and a lot of opportunities for airline issues to interfere.

However everything went smoothly, and I made it to Prague, though as usual I

was sleep deprived and a bit loopy (I can’t sleep on planes, so I was awake for

more than 24 hours at that point!)

I got off the plane and started walking, expecting to see the passport control area soon. I followed the crowd, at this point I was an experienced enough traveler to know that airports tend to make it impossible to miss that area. I kept walking…and walking…and still no passport controls.

I got to the baggage area, a faint sense of unease building – surely I would go through passport controls before getting my baggage, right? “Well maybe Prague does it differently” I thought – and set about to gather my baggage, praying that my suitcase had followed me there.

Thankfully it came onto the carousel, so I hauled it off and then looked around to figure out where to go next. I saw a sign for customs – great, maybe the passport controls are with the customs! I walked through the doors, past the customs agents with the cute German Shepherds, I kept walking, and suddenly I was out in the main airport area! Did I somehow miss Passport controls along the way?!

Panic set in – did I just enter Czechia illegally??  I looked around, stomach in knots, not sure what I should do. Everyone around me seemed to know where they were going and

what they were doing. I saw something that looked like an info desk. The clerk

was helping a Czech couple, for 10 minutes giving them details like a tour

guide (surely she can see me here waiting, right?)

She finally finished with the couple, and I haltingly told her I may have missed the passport area, that I was confused. Amused, the clerk explained to me – we are in the Schengen zone, and I flew into the Schengen zone terminal, so there is no passport

control. I still didn’t fully get it, but knowing that I didn’t miss something

and that I wasn’t unintentionally a criminal set my mind at ease.

It was only later that I fully understood what had happened. The Schengen zone is a large group of European countries that decided they would allow for free travel between each other and not have passport controls at their borders. Thus, from Amsterdam to Prague, both of which are in the Schengen zone, there wasn’t going to be passport check. Someone coming from outside would go through passport controls at the first point of entry into the zone – in my case, that was Amsterdam (I did have to get my passport checked in Amsterdam, but I thought they were just strict!)

It made perfect sense to me once I got some sleep – and then I could only laugh at the ridiculous mix of sleep deprivation and anxiety convincing me that I had unintentionally thwarted the system to enter the country illegally! Thankfully that was the most eventful thing on the trip – everything else went smoothly! But it made for an amusing (and humbling) story!