A Traveler's Lesson: Don't Overstay Your Visa!

Wow, what a $%#^@! relief. About a week ago, I decided to double-check how much time I was allowed in Europe this time, since I'd spent about 2 1/2 months in Europe during the summer. You don't actually need a visa, just a valid passport. But the rule is that with a U.S. passport (and many others) you're allowed to stay 90 days in Europe in any 180-day period. So it's easy enough to deduce if you only enter once: just don't stay more than 90 days and you're cool. However, figuring it out when you've left, been gone a while and then re-enter can be tricky.

I entered the European Union (actually the Schengen zone, which is kind of the same as the E.U. but slightly different) in Iceland, and thought that I could now stay for a couple of months since I'd been gone for more than two months. I was somewhat winging it based on several different articles I'd read about how it worked (note: I don't recommend winging it when it comes to possibly overstaying your time in foreign countries!). But they let me in at Iceland, so all seemed well at that point.

Then a week ago, as I was considering my upcoming travel plans, I realized I should get a little more specific and figure out exactly how much longer I was allowed. And I eventually figured out that, whoops, I was pretty sure I'd overstayed my time by about two weeks already at that point, because I hadn't stayed out of the E.U. long enough before re-entering. I looked around online for what the potential consequences were for overstaying in the Schengen zone. But there's no specific punishment. However I did come across someone who had been fined 700 euros for overstaying by a few weeks.

This got me pretty freaked out. Despite the fact that I had just arrived on the island of Ibiza and had a room booked there for another seven nights, I decided that the next day I would go out to the Ibiza airport with all my stuff, talk to someone and explain that I'd made a mistake and hope for the best, but be prepared to book a flight right then and exit Europe. This could have been quite costly when you add up forsaking the week's stay I'd already paid for, buying a flight on the spot which would be more expensive, plus any fine that might be imposed on me. But I didn't want to take a chance at even worse consequences, and figured being forthcoming would be the best approach.

Fortunately, I did some further research. I came across another article addressing the situation more specifically, and it had some good news: the southern European countries were much more lenient about it (the person who was fined 700 euros got caught in Germany) and of all the countries in the E.U./Schengen zone, Spain was the best place to depart from without getting caught. They really didn't care that much. Awesome.

With that in mind, I figured it was well worth the risk of staying a little longer and hoping to squeak out without incident, rather than reporting myself, in which case they would probably be compelled to do something with me whether they cared or not. So I searched around for flights and booked a couple of cheap flights for a week later (today): one from Ibiza to Madrid and another one the same day from Madrid to Marrakesh, Morocco.

The big day came and fortunately it all worked out. Flew into Madrid on my first flight, checked my baggage to Morocco with Ryan Air and got in line at passport control, definitely sweating it. Presented my passport, "Hola". He glanced at the stamps, gave me an exit stamp. "Muchas gracias." And I walked out of Europe.

I'm still in the Madrid airport as I write this, waiting for my flight to Marrakesh. But technically I'm no longer in Europe. I'm in the no-man's-land of the international zone. I'll need to show my passport to get on the flight, but they don't care about the stamps at that point. No visa required for Morocco. Phew, alright, lesson learned, I won't do that again. Now time for a glass of wine.