stamp, what stamp?
H. asks if I could theoretically live with Aleks in Great Britain. I say that I understood the Brexit regulation to mean that I would have to leave the country once every 180 days. But I don’t know if that would be tolerated, because they would notice when they returned that I would be there all the time. I’ve always been asked what I want in the UK and how long I plan to stay when I’ve crossed a border recently.
“How are they supposed to notice that,” asks H., “the stamps in the passport?” – “What kind of stamps,” I say, “they scan the passport, there must be a database somewhere that tells me how often I enter the country.” I’ve never had a stamp in my passport, except for East Germany and Israel, and that was over thirty years ago.
H. says their passports are full of stamps. She has lived and worked in many countries outside of Europe over the past twenty years. The border control, where the passport is placed on some kind of scanning device by the control staff, does not exist in their countries. You get stamps everywhere. For countries that require never having been to certain other countries, she has a different passport, without the problematic stamps.
So that’s all still there, almost everywhere. I just never thought about it.
(Kathrin Passig)