What Is Schengen?

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(From Road Trips for Families)
A Schengen Visa is a short-stay visa allowing its holder to circulate in the Schengen area, which covers 26 countries without border controls between them. These countries are: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. When you get a Schengen visa, you get a short-stay visa to 26 European countries. (I have been to countries in italics).
A Schengen visa lets its holder stay in any of the “Schengen States” for 90 days. You can travel freely between the 26 Schengen countries while your visa is valid.

Consider it much like being able to move around all fifty US states as a foreign visitor.
Once you are in Europe, getting from one country to another is usually affordable and easy. Whether you take short flights from one country to another, rent a car, or travel by train, the destinations are not that far apart. Even getting from one country to another, not to mention from one city to another city within the same country, is pretty easy to figure out. If you are able to find a home base.

I prefer using the short flights from discount airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet. And I love using the Eurail system, particularly the high-speed options. I usually choose a central European hub as my home base: Frankfurt, Munich, and Paris, since each have so many transportation options with high frequency.
My recent trips have used Frankfurt as my base, though I much prefer Munich. Both have a quick train from the airport to the Central Bahnhof. Paris is a bit more involved.
When you venture to a non-Schengen country, you will go through their Customs and Immigration process. And most of the time, it is a real pain in the a$$! My last trip to Europe went through Istanbul, but the airport is new and fast. The older airports in central Europe are not built to handle a huge influx of tourists form outside the Schengen zone.
And of course, arriving back in San Francisco, my Global Entry makes re-entry to the US very fast and painless.

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