Visa requirements for Canadians abolished!
 

Well, Christmas has come early for some that are planning travel to Poland or presumably the other newly minted EU nations. This from the Canadian government on Poland specifically:

"A valid Canadian passport is required for Canadians intending to visit Poland. The passport should be valid for at least six months beyond the date of your expected departure from the country. Canadians must also be in possession of proof of sufficient funds for their stay. As of May 1, 2004, Canadians will no longer require a visa for stays in Poland of up to three months"

Details on this at:

http://www.voyage.gc.ca/dest/report-...untry=241000#8

Other countries:

http://www.voyage.gc.ca/dest/ctry/visa-en.asp

Enjoy!

Anyone know at what point an EU passport will get us into the new member countries' citizens lines?

andrew

Poland was the only one of the new EU countries that still had this visa provision for Canadians, even as of Friday. This is good news because the visa process was both trying and expensive.

According to this link, Canadians visiting the Czech Republic no longer require visas for trips of < 90 days.

Yay!

http://www.czechembassy.org.uk/consular.htm#DRUHA

It has been strictly reciprocal system, to my recollection the Czech Republic reintroduced visas as soon as Canadian Govnmt imposed new entry requirements. In Poland exception was given to US citizens, possibly due to 10 million Poles living in the US and the fact that as NY Times recently described it " Poland is the most proamerican country in the world - including United States" As for EU passport holders to my knowledge most of the new EU countries redesigned old lines for their citizens to "EU citizens".

Anyhow, watched ceremonies of the elargement on BBC. Simultanous concert in Berlin and Warsaw and beautiful show in the harbour af Malta's La Valetta... fireworks, laser lights and smoke with the harbour's forts in the background ... music by one of the members of Pink Floyd.

At midnight Union's blue flag went up at Warsaw's main Square to the tune of Chopin's Grand Polonaise. This will make sense if you saw "The Pianist". Radio Warsaw played the same music during siege of Warsaw, when Poland was attacked by Germans and Soviets in 1939.
Thay have waited and struggled for 65 years to fully reunite with the rest of continent..

Great News!!! I know CZ have been changing visa rules and was caught at least once by surprise. I think in the early 90s visas were not required for Canadians but when I did my 1st trip there in 1992, visas were required. They were required I think till 95 or 96 and boy was it a pain to renew them in addition to the residents permits when I was working there. It was fine until 2000 or 2001 when Canadian gov't imposed visas on Czechs so they reciprocated. I know I forgot to check while on conference in Leipzig and decided on the spur of the moment to visit some friends in Prague and was thrown off the train at the boarder. ..

uhmm, I am going to be near frankfurt next week maybe do a quicky trip next weekend :-D

Whooppeeeee!

As for CZ, there were actually pretty good reasons why visas were imposed (at the request of the CZ government actually, according to my sources).

I think PL and CZ want to join Schengen sooner rather than later, so are therefore changing rules rather quickly!

I knew you'd be pleased, YOWKid!

As a Canadian and Czech citizen, this is great news. I thought this would be the case when they joined the EU. My wife is not and cannot get Czech citizenship so this will make trips back to the CR much easier.

The current Visa situation arose when many Roma Gypsies came to Canada after seeing some wacked out documentary in the Czech Republic saying that Canada was accepting them with no problems which of course wasn't the case. So many tried to come over here and claim refugee status so the Canadians imposed the Visa requirement to try and stem the inflow of illegal immigrants and of course the Czech's reciprocated.

Great news!
 

Fantastic news! I was planning a trip to both countries this summer and this will save me a lot of running around (money too!). :cool:

If I remember correctly, I think the documentary was on Cesky Televise where the documentary basically portrayed Canada as being very open and generous with refugees so that many Roma Gypsies sold all they owned to go to Canada to claim refugee status with all the gold on sidewalk stuff. One thing was that Canadian gov't imposed visa requirements AND $50 visa processing fee so Czech reciprocated with Visa and fee. US has visa requirements for Czechs too but do not charge a fee so they did not need a visa.

As a Polish and Canadian citizen, this is awesome news, now I am free to take my friends to Poland without the hassles of a visa!

Poland has also waived visas for Australians, New Zealanders and Brunei.
This will no doubt bring a huge influx of summer backpackers and a boost to Poland's tourism sector. It is a beautiful country with a fastly improving tourism infrastructure and cultural gems that can rival any other European country.


Poland has no plans to issue an EU passport (the one that says European Union on the front) as their recent passports satisfy EU requirements.

For those of you with Polish, Czech and other passports from the new EU Member States, you are now of course entitled to use the "EU Citizen" lines at EU ports of entry (indeed LHR already have nice big new signs up, featuring the flags of all 25 member states, next to the EU immigration lane). This should save you some time!

As far as I am aware this also applied in reverse (many of the airports I've visited over the last 6 months- year in the new Member States were already operating EU citizen lanes at their main border posts anyway).

Czech story...
 

Good news indeed! Too bad this change didn't happen last year...could have saved my parents some $ when they went for their Eastern Europe tour.

I remember in 2001 I was in Vienna and decided to do a day trip to Brno to visit some friends. Planned the trip with another friend and away we go! Get on the train and all is well. As we approach the Czech border some border officials get on...I pull out my passport and my friend pulls out his American passport. The official hardly gives his passport a second glance, but for mine he's flipping back and forth, forward and backwards, obviously looking for something. I think he's just checking for the exit stamp from the Austrian side and am about to show him where this is when he takes my passport and starts walking away! :eek:

My friend and I look at each other, perplexed. Several minutes later (by which time I'm sweating buckets!) he returns with another guy who, in broken English, politely explains to me that Canadians require a visa to enter the country. "Since when?" I ask. "Quite recently" is the reply. (I later found out that this was in retaliation for Canada imposing visa requirements on Czechs.) Long story short, got busted at the Czech border, pulled off the train, and sent back to Vienna. Not fun. :mad: :(

Hopefully I won't have to repeat that experience anytime soon!

ml

Polish Story
 

Somehow visa related ... in the past few years, I have noticed that Hungarian and Polish (havn't visited Czech Republic in 15 years)Border Guard Corps seems to select their female soldiers and officers posted to the major crossing points (especially airports), according to the male chauvinistic system developed by Southwest ("start interview with their legs and work up to their faces") and Braniff ("Puccis Galore"). Seeing those ladies having to carry on their national duty, wearing high heel army issued shoes, short (to say least) khaki skirts with 9mm Beretta Cheetahs on their belts, makes me angry, that such politically incorrect approach is still possible in XXI century and makes the entire experience of border crossing quite stressful...