@bastianallgeier Similar feelings for me, even though I lived further from the border and was younger when change happened. Even though, I remember the sucking experience of crossing borders, the weird feeling of foreign money. The money part is still wonderful to me during travel and an unexpected nuisance when visiting non Euro countries.

These German ideas of introducing border controls feel like time is going backwards, apart from the fact that borders were built in the past decades were under the assumption that no controls are necessary. Those people trying to avoid controls will easily manage, families on their way to vacations and relatives will be hit hardest.

@bastianallgeier I drove from Dresden to Prague with spare time so didn't keep to a route, and remember the astonished joy when I went over a little bridge and realised I was in Poland.

Going along the road beside the river was a revelation. Sticks in the ground on each side, painted with the colours of the appropriate flag. The river is not wide - a serious long-jumper could cross it - and THAT is a border? What nonsense humans perpetrate.

@bastianallgeier For context, heavily controlled borders were a 20th century invention. Up to the success of the eugenicist movement in USA, it was fairly common for European people to just wander around, or move to new places, and no political authority particularly minded (with the exception of enslaved people, which was only ultimately abolished with the issuance of the Emancipation Manifesto of 1861by the last remaining absolute monarch of Europe, who also happened to rule the last European country where slavery was legal, Alexandr II of Russia). Borders used to be about preventing hostile military from corssing into a country's claimed territory.

Unfortunately, after WWI, the eugenicists' anti-immigration ideas led to a series of countries establishing civilian immigration controls, and while these were relatively mild in the beginning, they had become quite a serious issue for refugees by WWII. Much of the Displaced People's mess after WWII would have been a lot easier to handle if there hadn't been the immigration control bullshit in the way.

@bastianallgeier now imagine sort of the same, but being born in eastern block and lining up for hours on borders while going for a vacation ...

Yeah anger is the right emotion here ..

@bastianallgeier I'm so old I remember the years of intricately tedious negotiations ultimately facilitating the European Economic Community, only to be outdone by the teeth-pullingly elaborate diplomacies that finally led to the formation of the EU.

Europeans seem in generally to be happier, freer, & better off: it would be a crime against humanity to just throw all that away.

@bastianallgeier

Same, via Brexit. I no longer live in the UK and won't renew my UK passport because it's now useless

@AnnaAnthro

@bastianallgeier One of my first "dark" memories is the transit through the GDR starting at Helmstedt. Arriving at the big border control station, lit up like nothing I'd seen before, my parents becoming very tense, the waiting in one of the many queues, the GDR border guards who spoke in a strange, harsh tone and took away our passports (and I was so proud of my brand new children's passport!) and how I was so relieved to get it back...

I don't want anybody to feel that way again.

@bastianallgeier

I remember one incident in the early 80s. I was on vacation with my English boyfriend, and on the way back to Germany we had picked up a french tramper. Three different nationalities in a colourful Citroen 2CV! Too much for the Bavarian border staff. We were pulled out and every single passport was inspected. It took half an hour. I don't want that back!

@bastianallgeier As someone from the UK who's had this populist bullshit forced upon us, by small minded people, I concur.

We should be in a world with no borders - national identity and nationalism are outdated concepts - who cares where you were born, is that the only thing that defines these people?

True unification feels ever further away, sadly.

@bastianallgeier @oliof was just saying this to my wife last night as we drove through Switzerland, after leaving Germany visiting friends and being in France this morning.

Couldn't do that when we liked if we still lived in the UK.