PASSPORT QUESTION
 

When traveling to Rome from the USA through CDG airport in Paris we never had our passports stamped.
No one other than Security at the boarding gates even looked at the passports.

We've traveled to Austria & Germany with stamps in our passports and several South American countries again having our passports stamped.
I find it curious that we could come & go without anything "officially" documenting that we were there.

What has been your experience?

My experience is that hardly any country stamps passports any more, at least not in Europe, so there is nothing new about that. If you were in transit, officially, you didn't disembark at CDG, so that sounds fairly normal to me. In fact, I think that when I've passed through CDG on the way to some other country in Europe (not Italy, though, but Czech Republic), there were some guys along the route that did glance at your passport some (standing near the stairs on the way down to where you caught the shuttle bus to get to another terminal). But it wasn't some major waystation where you stood in line like when you are really getting out to go into Paris.


Why would anyone care you were at CDG in transit during a flight? The airline had your travel itinerary and knew if you were on board each flight, so the airline definitely does have something documenting you.

I would expect your passports to be scanned at CDG since you were entering the Schengen zone. No one stamps them any more.
Security has no need to see your passports, other than to check you won't be sent back by the country you are flying to for not having one.

Thanks for the responses. I wasn't too surprised in Paris for no stamping (but I wouldn't have been surprised if they did either.) But when arriving in Rome, we didn't have to go through any kind of immigration--so no stamping there either.

We've been told that when we go to South Africa this Summer that we will need 2 blank facing pages in our passports for stamping.

It's fine with me if many countries don't stamp--we'll just get more milage out of a book rather than having to get another.

Now coming back into the States is another matter! We thought Newark & Miami were bad until at Atlanta 2 airbuses arrived from international destinations within 10 minutes of each other. Over 600 people picking up bags and rechecking before going through TSA for connecting flights again was a zoo!

It's a sad commentary on how careful our country has to be.

You may not have realized it, but you went through immigration (passport control) at CDG as this was your first point of entry into the Schengen zone. When you arrived in Rome from CDG, you were already in the Schengen zone, so no immigration in Rome (think of it as similar to a domestic US flight).

<i>No one stamps them any more.</i>

Really? Tell that to my passport, which I have to take to the Embassy in a couple of weeks for more pages. Most of the current ones are taken up by Dutch and Danish stamps. Indeed, I have never not had them stamped when entering either country from outside a Schengen country.

EU citizens, however, don't seem to be stamped much anymore.

Most of us don't even have a passport when travelling inside the EU but our ID cards , so no way to stamp it !

I just dropped my passport off for more pages - but I'm the crazy one who smiles sweetly at the border and ASKS for a stamp - sometimes it works, and I love looking back at all the places I've been!