Oh, Austria and Switzerland will go to great lengths to keep the German hooligans out - the German hooligans are just as nasty as the British ones (during France 1998, for example, they almost beat a policeman to death.)
See here.

Not really - Schengen just means they will not be asking for/looking at ID's/passports. Since Switzerland is not a member of the EU, customs controls will remain in full force both ways, coming and going. Expect no visible changes at Swiss land borders - the only difference is that customs officers will only be looking at the goods you carry, not at who you are and why you're there.

I can't believe people are actually posting that you'll be fine if you overstay your visa. I tell you, if you have left and you were fine, it's the exception and not the rule! If you haven't had your passport stamped on entry for some bizarre reason, your exact time, date and point of entry will be logged in the massive database in Strasbourg that all the immigration officers and police in Schengen have access to.

My friend from New Zealand who stayed with me in Holland, came for a holiday for two months and then left via Paris after 2 months and 21 days, she did not overstay. Due to some miss communication by the French, the Dutch were unaware of her departure and precisely 2 days after her visa expired, 7 armed Dutch immigration police complete with a prison van and sniffer dogs turned up on my doorstep at 6:30 in the morning with a warrant to search my property. Don't tell me they're relaxed!

If you overstay your visa, sure you won't get caught, until you leave that is. Then 4 things happen.

1/ You'll be detained and asked why you have stayed ndays over your visa and what you have been doing.

2/ You'll be fined a substantial amount of money

3/ You'll have your passport stamped as persona non grata.

4/ You'll have your details entered into the Schengen Information System and barred from the Schengen Zone for 5 years at least.

Don't try to enter Britain or Switzerland from Schengen if your visa has expired. If you get that far, British immigration will send you back to the port from which you came for the Schengen authorities to deal with by your own expense. You'll will also have been deported from the UK and Ireland and therefore are automatically barred from there for 5 years too.

Switzerland is not in Schengen yet, but it can place your details into the Shengen Information System if you manage to sneak over the border and fly out from Zurich.

You cannot absolutely not, get an extention to your tourist visa, it's strictly 90 days in, 90 days out. We do have temporary residents visas but they're only for people awaiting work visas and are employer sponsered, some countries might even allow spouses joining partners on them, but that's rare.

milly2001, welcome to Flyertalk!

And I welcome in particular your cautionary tale - one that is much needed here! ^^^

^^I agree. I don't understand it either.

Methinks, though, there is more to this story. For one, how did they know she was staying with you?

Maybe because there is an obligation to register? You do that with any hotel in Germany. In Italy they even take a copy of your passport or ID Card....

In the Netherlands, only if you are staying longer than 90 days.

Are you sure of your facts here?

Can you provide a source?

Interesting. If they have access to a database, then why do the German officers search through my 200+ page passport for a stamp each time I leave Schengen via Germany?

As mentioned not getting stamped isn't a bizarre incident. It is business as usual at CDG. For a very brief period, they started stamping, but now they have mostly stopped again.

milly2001 has posted items that certainly are not aligned with what I know or what is usually experienced in relevant cases with which I'm familiar.

Yes there must be something more to his situation. People overstaying their tourist visas is a daily occurrence at all major Euro airports. I'm pretty sure they don't send the dogs after all of them.

The key word here being probably. After years of not being stamped, the one time I really would have preferred not to get a stamp, they did.

That which you claim is an exception is actually not the exception for those non-EU nationals who are usually not required to get a visa affixed to their passport prior to boarding a flight to enter an EU Schengen country.

What you say above is anything but a certainty -- even in the country which you try to use a an example below.

If she was traveling with a New Zealand passport, it is ordinarily 3 months allowance. So your mention of 2 months + 21 days + 2 days below seems incongruent with the way things ordinarily go, or you are leaving out other details -- whether you know it or not.

If sniffer dogs turned up too, that indicates there was a broader investigation under way than just a non-overstay "overstay".

That is not a given.

In the following too, there are holes and we have an example where facts are mingled with misrepresentations, thereby furthering a false image of what actually happens in most circumstances:

Be fined a substantial amount of money? Not usually.

"Manage to sneak over the border" into Switzerland? Not much management needed to exit from the Schengen zone and enter into Switzerland or exit Switzerland and enter the Schengen zone.

"Barred from the Schengen zone for 5 years" if doing that? Not usually.

"Temporary resident visas ... only for people awaiting work visas and are employer sponsered (sic)" is not true for the entirety of the Schengen zone either.

There are ways of certainly making sure a passport does not get stamped on entry into (or even exit from) the EU Schengen zone.

AFAIK, there is no database that routinely stores data of all third-country nationals entering the Schengen area. The Schengen information system only stores the details of individuals against whom an alert has been raised (who should be denied entry). The Visa Information System would store data, including biometric data, of all visa applicants. However, it is not yet operational and I am not sure whether border officers would have routine access to the system either. It is primarily designed to prevent visa shopping when individuals have been denied a visa by one of the Member States, and it would be primarily accessed by consular authorities rather than border control officers.
That said, it is not smart to overstay your visa, as you do indeed run the risk of being refused entry on a later visit.