Thanks for all the feedback on yesterday’s post about Plan G, both here on the blog as well in all your emails. 🙂

The G in Plan G today stands for “geography”. One question that has come up several times: I mentioned that we have to exit the Schengen Area when our residence permits in Germany expire at the end of March. But what does that mean, exactly? Where do we need to go? It’s actually not something many people here can say right off, without looking it up, since there are a variety of groupings of countries in Europe (and beyond), and it’s easy to get confused between what country is part of what group. So today I will provide you with a quick guide to how the Schengen Area ≠ the European Union ≠ the Eurozone, and how we figure out where we need to go to get out of dodge – er – the Schengen Area next month.

If you don’t want to wade through all the explanations, then you can cut to the chase below the ****** to see where we’ll be headed on March 31st.

But if you want to go through the different terms, here’s a short summary of each:

1. The European Union a the group of 28 countries who have formed an economic-political union that has its own elected Parliament that sits in Brussels, Belgium.  The countries are in Europe, but they are not necessarily contiguous. The UK, Italy, and Germany are all part of the EU.  Switzerland, which is surrounded by EU countries, but is not part of the EU.
2. The Eurozone is the name for the 19 EU countries who have adopted the Euro € as their currency. Note that this is fewer than the number of countries which are in the EU, which means that not all EU countries use the Euro.However, in order to use the Euro a country does have to part of the EU.  Therefore, we can predict that Switzerland not use the Euro, because Switzerland is not part of the EU. However, the UK, which is a big member of the EU, is not part of the Eurozone; it still uses the British Pound £.
3. The Schengen Area is a group of 26 countries who have signed the Schengen Treaty to make passage across their borders easy for citizens/residents of those countries. So, for example, if you are from Germany and hold a German passport, you can cross the border into Austria or France, for example, without needing a visa and without going through passport control.
   Now, you might be tempted to think that the 26 Schengen countries are just a subset of the 28 EU countries, but you’d be wrong.  Switzerland, for example — not part of the Eurozone, not part of the EU — is a signatory to the Schengen Treaty, and thus part of the Schengen Area. Same with Iceland, of all the unexpected (at least to me) places. Mostly the Schengen Area covers a large swath across Europe, with countries either being part of the treaty, almost part of the treat, or a defacto parties to it (e.g. a landlocked place like San Marino, which is independent but has no separate border control, effectively counts as being part of the Schengen Area).

So, what we need to do when our residence permits end is to exit the Schengen Area and get our passports stamped to reset ourselves as tourists when we come back into the Schengen Area. Americans are entitled to be tourists in the Schengen Area for a total of 3 months out of 6, so we need to remake ourselves into tourists officially when we go to Italy for Chris to give a talk in Milan in April.

To get out of the Schengen Area, we need to go a little further afield than just Switzerland, which is what several people here in Tübingen have assumed was possible. But nope, Switzerland may not be part of the EU, but it is still part of the Schengen area, so that isn’t enough. Which is too bad, since we’re just a couple of hours by train from Switzerland here in Tübingen. So after considering various options, our choice is to fly to London March 31st. It’s in the UK, which is in the EU, but crucially it’s not part of the Schengen Area. We will then fly back to the Schengen Area — specifically to Verona,  Italy — a couple of days later, starting our the next phase: tourists in the Schengen Area.

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Cut to the chase: Since the UK is not part of the Schengen Area, we’ve decided to make London our “getting out of dodge” destination. We have tickets booked to fly to London on March 31st.