> Unfortunately, we've lost a bit of that in the last 15 years, but we're still only approaching Europe. You say that with a degree of certainty that deserves

> Unfortunately, we've lost a bit of that in the last 15 years, but we're still only approaching Europe. You say that with a degree of certainty that deserves to be challenged. You can travel through large swaths of the EU without showing your passport even once. This week I was in France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany all by car, all without needing my passport (except hotels, but they do that everywhere in the world). Although it has gotten stricter in the last few years, flights from Germany to Norway, Sweden, or Denmark could routinely be boarded without showing any ID until recently. I live near the French border in Germany, but you wouldn't even know when you're crossing it. In "heartland" Europe, there are often no border stations at all. Sometimes you just notice you changed countries because the street signs look slightly different. Compared to a lot of other countries, including the US, EU police are doing almost no traffic stops or other forms of public "papers, please" checks. The last time I was in a traffic stop was about 5 years ago, and I accrue about 50k kilometers a year. Compare that to a random Asian country where police are sometimes lying in wait near ambiguous signage in order to catch expensive-looking rental cars passing through, or compare that to a rural sheriff in a southern US state who likes to capture (and throw in jail for a few hours with great fanfare) people passing by in out-of-state cars when they predictably go a little above the draconian speed limit on the completely empty and straight highway. In Cairo, you can't even drive downtown from the airport without being stopped for ID at least twice. Maybe I'm missing a bit of the picture because I don't like to go by train, but overall movement in Europe seems a lot less restricted than pretty much everywhere else I've been to.