AmericanAnDerTU

The EU really pisses me off sometimes. Not because they cater to big industry or because the system is so murky and few citizens of the EU actually understand its goings-on. No, that doesn’t bother me. Firstly, I’m not an EU citizen so I don’t really have much room to bitch and moan. Secondly, I don’t care. Third, the EU has done quite a number of great things that outweigh the bad, I think, but I digress…

No, there is one single thing that the EU has done that pisses me off more than anything else. It’s a violation that is so grievous, so heinous, so despicable that the perpetrators should be brought up on human rights violations or something equally outlandish and shocking. What is it that the EU has done to do such a fine job of pissing me off? They lowered the fucking borders between member countries!

It was always a childhood dream of mine to own a passport. I got my first passport when I was five years old when I visited Austria and Germany for the first time. My next passport was issued to me when I was about seventeen or so in preparation for my trip to Austria in 2005 that was part of my high school graduation present. I had dreamed of traveling through Europe after that and collecting stamps in the numerous pages of my little blue book. Unfortunately I didn’t have the foresight at the time to read up on the EU and its laws before flying to Austria - I was too busy doing nothing in my senior year of high school.

Only after I had set foot in the city of music that is Vienna and traveled to Castles Country (Burgenland) that I discovered the EU was systematically dismantling the borders between its member countries. Thankfully I drove to Hungary at one point and got two stamps (entering and leaving) there. In 2007, after I moved to Austria, I knew that some of the borders were still standing and it might be possible to collect a few from the former Commies before the EU decided to step all over my childhood dream yet again. I got to fly to England that summer and collected the necessary stamps in my book then, an event that put a huge grin on my face whenever I paged through my passport to admire the cheap ink.

The morning that I flew home for Christmas that year, however, one of CNN’s sexy talking heads (you notice how CNN International has all the babes and CNN USA gets the dogs?) was blathering on about how Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary were all lowering their borders with the EU and I realized I had been foiled yet again. Another childhood dream trampled upon by the man.

I’ve looked at my father’s old passport and seen the stamps he’s collected from driving around western Europe and it was so great to see them all there. It reminded me of the movie European Vacation, one of my favorite movies, where the family also gets to travel through Europe and collect stamps.

That was always something magical for me: driving or flying in a short distance in virtually any direction and ending up in a country with an entirely different language and culture. An experience like that for an American is hard to come by. The best we have is Canada and Mexico and let’s face it - that’s BORING. Now my only option for such an adventure is either Africa or Southeast Asia. Hopefully the African Union doesn’t get any bright ideas and decide to start making trade and travel easier amongst its member countries and their citizens…

Image courtesy of Map of Europe.