I often still marvel when reading the biographies of enlightenment-era people, who often travelled and worked extensively in all sorts of cities and countries.

I often still marvel when reading the biographies of enlightenment-era people, who often travelled and worked extensively in all sorts of cities and countries. There are often tales of going to Rome for a year or two, then returning to Scotland, then off to Germany for a while, or wherever. While the modern-EU person can do this without any trouble, anyone from outside the EU (or the US), this is just a pipedream without serious legal money to throw at the visa manufacturing industry. Nationalism is still heavily with us, and even more so than in earlier times.