It would be possible to board the plane with a counterfeit visa, since airline staff usually don't have access to immigration databases, but how would it be possible to complete a journey and enter a nation with a counterfeit visa?

True, but if they are set up to deal with passport booklets, then scanning cards shouldn't be too much of a leap. Perhaps at some point passport booklets will be available only for travel to those countries that require them.

Wow, that has got to result in passports getting filled up pretty fast. I wonder if it's a conspiracy to generate more renewal revenue :rolleyes:

Maybe with countries that only look at (and not scan) the visa, such as - IIRC - Vietnam.

VN also stamps its own citizens, but the stamps are small and the immigration people are trained to use passport page space extremely judiciously (e.g. entries in left column, exits in the right column, perfectly lined up, minimal space between rows).

I've been trying to get the Chinese border control people to adopt a similar approach with my passport, and they do a pretty good job. However, the "rows" thing doesn't work so well because the departure stamp is much larger than the arrival stamp. 5 entries/exits per page isn't especially hard to pull off; 6 requires (a lot of) over stamping (alternating exits on the left/right every row could potentially work as well, I suppose).

Of course they physically still have tje stamps...it's just that, when you are travelling within the Schengen zone, you are segregated from the parts of the airport where the border checks (and, therefore, passport-stamping) is done.

Interesting you should mention HEL. It was the only country I got stamped but didn't visit as my transit was too short. I told the immigration officer that I needed to go landside to "see a friend"...

I just got my LUX stamp last week!

I have done some of those Balkan countries and you can definitely do that by bus. Annoyingly Montenegro didn't stamp my passport:(

I traveled through all of those countries last year which is why I mentioned it, but if I recall correctly the bus times would not enable you to make the journey in a single day...

Ah...yeah missed the "in a single day" bit. I somehow doubt the bus would work, but definitely doable with a car.

I like getting stamps; fortunately, the US Gov't will still do the double size booklet for free when you get the passport.

Alas, my most frequent destinations (CAnada and Israel), I have NEXUS, and Israel is now issuing barcoded slips.

In general however, I prefer the availability of trusted programs to speed entry. At the end of the day, my time matters more than getting a souvenir; I have the boarding passes (For now) for that.

I use my phone as boarding passes as much as humanly possible... if there's one thing that I hate about air travel, it's the paper boarding passes. :)

Flying last June HND-TSA-GMP. Could have flown direct, but wanted my first 787 flight HND-TSA. ANA and Eva could not interline my bag so I had to "enter" Taiwan, reclaim and recheck my bag for an hour or so.
Exiting at TSA there was some angst by the immigration agents about why I had come to Taiwan for such a short time. It took a few minutes to explain why I was coming and going.
Can't call it a mileage run since I was traveling on an award ticket.
But back to this thread -- picked up 2 more passport stamps.

correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that like flying from NY to Chicago with a connection in Miami? :D
(edit... in fact, I think HND-TSA-GMP is about the same mileage as JFK-MIA-ORD)

On a slightly off topic note, this is how I know I feel at home at FT. What I thought was a weird, OCD-like hobby of mine has exploded into a 7+ page thread discussion ;)

I visited close to 40 Euro countries without a stamp (actually without passport at all) only to realize I could have asked for it (at least in the Balkans) and make my pages more enjoyable.
Last week I noticed also Australia didn't stamp the passport on the way out, a change occurred in the last few years, if I recall correctly.
Agree that a physical passport nowadays looks completely anachronistic.

Crass.

The plan is to fly into Geneva from the US and spend some time in Switzerland before heading south to Italy via train. Will I get one or both this way?