Yep. I flew DUS/AMS and it was like flying anywhere within the states.

It will be very hard to get a stamp on that flight since you want even meet a customs official.

Travelling within Schengen is the same thing as travelling domestically (or at least that's what they want it to be), so pretty much the same as flying between LAX and SEA, very very convenient for those of us who travel a lot within Europe.
The Schengen zone covers all EU countries excluding the UK and Ireland + Iceland and Norway. So if you travel between France and UK you need to show your passport, between France and Germany no passport control.

Although if you travel by plane you should always bring your passport as proof of ID (to show at check-in and before boarding).
For EU citizens there is now a special EU ID-card which is accepted as official ID.

That's a great idea! I travel to Canada often, and I have never received a stamp when driving across the border. I have only received a stamp once out of the 3 times I have flown to Canada.

How about on Eurail trains? Are there any times where you have to go through C/I on trains in Europe? Not just the S countries.

There's a guy working for DHS at IAD that seems to rather routinely stamp over Brazilian visas he comes across. Perhaps some US immigration agents have an axe to grind against Brazil or Americans visiting Brazil? :eek:

That is: all pre-2004-enlargement EU countries + Norway and Iceland. Some of the new EU countries are expected to join Schengen in the next few years.

I have never been rebuffed for answering and they even seem friendly enough to stamp on the page I ask them to. Weird as that is, I want to fill it up in an orderly manner as I'm still smarting from when a JFK customs agent stamped on page 17 instead of the next empty page which was 10.

But surely there is an electronic record of where you've been somewhere??? If not, why all the extra security features in the passport itself?

When crossing into or out of the Schengen zone, officials from the country you're entering will board the train at the border (or a stop close to it) and check passports while the train rolls along. It wasn't quite like clearing customs and immigration, just a passport check and stamp. (Then again, that's all I got when flying into PRG, too).

I don't doubt that they could have interviewed me if they felt it necessary, but that didn't seem to be the case. In fact, I'm pretty sure the officials I saw were either federal police or border guards, not specific C&I people. But that may well be who handles those formalities in those countries.

So when I took the train from Budapest to Munich, I got checked and stamped by Austrian polizei at the Hungarian border, but the only check at the German border was for tickets, by a DB conductor.

ETA:

Thanks also to dll and Fishie. I explained to the officer that I wasn't in transit, that I had been planning to immigrate, then leave the next day. But possibly the 72 notation was to keep my six-month "Leave to enter" counter from restarting, as I had been previously in the UK for five weeks on business, and didn't require a work permit. I assume had I stayed longer than 72 hours, I would have reverted to my previous stamp.

I was planning to ask the officer at JFK to stamp me so if I needed to return, UK officials could see that I had not planned any chicanery. But not only did he stamp me before I could ask, he inquired if I had any electricity (he saw my Astoria address on the customs card). I didn't know it at the time, but my place was one block away from the affected areas. Definitely fortunate.

I've flown into Canada 12-15 times over the years and never had my US Passport Stamped. After reading this thread and Flyertalk I've now asked the last two times and each time gotten a stamp-once each at YYZ & YXU.

Belgium stamped my Passport last year when I flew in, but when I flew from Belgium to Austria, they did not and there was no customs or immigration checkpoint.

I entered Brazil for this first time this week, and they stamped my passport more carefully and neatly than any other country. I suppose that since your visa is good for 5 years after your first entry they make sure they stamp clearly on the page the visa is in.

I'd never been stamped when returning to the US from any country - At least 20 flights into DTW, EWR, IAH, ORD, YYZ & IAD. The last two times I've come back it's been from YYZ and I've asked for a stamp. One agent did with a smile, the other asked why and accepted my explanation that I wanted a record of my travels to help my with visa applications.

I'm flying from Brazil to EWR on Friday - I'll ask for a stamp there too :D

If Brazil carefully stamped anywhere on the pages with two of my Brazilian visas, it would be stamping over the visas themselves and making it even harder to read them than they already are. They carefully stamp the facing pages in my case, while the US officials like to stamp over the ink-printed visas themselves.

You are correct, the Visa takes up a whole page, and at stamp that was placed when I got the visa that lists the fees paid takes up two spots leaving two open squares on the page opposite the visa.

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

I forgot to add in my previous post that Mexico stamped my passport went I was there last year, and their stamp is so wide it took up two spots.

I don't love them anymore..
 

No more stamps than necessary for me please.

I just returned from a trip to South Africa, where I ran into serious problems with immigration in JNB. Althought there was still ample space in my passport, I didn't have two COMPLETELY empty pages in it as required by SA immigration. I had to stay for two hours, before they finally decided to let me in anyway. During that time they made me believe that I will be on the next glight back to Germany. My wife was already through immigration and I couldn't contact her. It was not a nice experience.

Just wanted to share that and: Beware of collecting stamps :p

Cheers,
Torsten

One thing that I have noticed is that when immigration officials stamp passports, they usually stamp on seemingly random pages, sometimes not within the boxes (even though the stamp is small enough to fit in one box). They also seem to ignore the headings over the boxes that say one side is for entries and the other side is for departures.

As far as I know, only US passports have these boxes and the "entry" - "departure" designations. So most immigration officers can't be bothered to work according to the US government's prefered stamping routine... :D
Countries that are very good at finding little spots on "full" pages to put their stamps include the Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Australia. Countries that love to spoil a blank page include Indonesia and Malaysia.