[chimeracoder]

> Depends on which part of Europe. In the more diverse parts, nobody would bat an eyelid (even if border police might profile you).

As a person who matches the description above, and has traveled to Europe extensively and frequently, I can tell you that as much as Europeans like to believe this is this case, it is absolutely not true.

> Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like. Other than of course the usual suspects of Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan and etc. who could for any reason.

Unless you're making some extremely critical assumptions about how much wear the word "indefinite" can bear, this is unfortunately not true either.

[josephg]

A couple years ago my girlfriend and I spent about 2 months travelling through europe. We visited about 10 countries on our trip. A lot of our travel between countries was by bus. After a few bus trips we started noticing something strange - the busses often pulled over for rest stops just after we'd changed countries. Everyone would all get out of the bus to stretch our legs, and some police would miraculously appear and decide they wanted to talk to some of the people who were on our bus.

Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries. But countries still don't want certain people coming in. And they don't want drugs smuggled in either.

It was really interesting who they decided to pull aside for a chat. It was almost always men who were travelling alone. Almost always men who were in the 25-45 age range. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was some racial profiling going on as well. The police never questioned me - probably because I was with my girlfriend the whole time. If she wasn't there, I bet I would have been pulled aside every time too.

Anyway, I believe your experience in Europe. But if you were a man travelling alone, its possible it was partially or fully due to that. For about a decade, every time I went through security at an airport I was always "randomly selected" to have my bag swabbed for chemicals. It never happens any more, and I'm as white as they come. I assume it was a gender + age + travelling alone thing - but its still a mystery to me.

[Symbiote]

I think a good part of it is 'wealth' profiling.

I'm white, male. I travel to some lower-income countries for work. I can dress like a neat, well-paid software developer with the €2000 laptop and €1000 camera in my bag. I'll sail through security in Europe and at the destination, then have a horde of people hassling me for a taxi, sometimes pretty aggressively, and I feel I stand out as an easy target for robbery.

Instead, I wear some old, faded clothes for the journey. Then I get the "random" drug swab check in Europe, border control at the destination might ask to see my hotel booking, but the taxi drivers and street kids will ignore me as another cheakskate backpacker.

[lukan]

"Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries."

That is not what it means.

Checks became way more frequent.

[DeathArrow]

>Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries.

Since EU has problems with the illegal immigration, there are some checks and they happen more frequently.

[InitialLastName]

How many weeks have you spent detained by EU border officials?