Before the Eu....

Osboro

Well-known member
Just for some of the younger posters what are some of the things you remember about travel before the EU?
(Admittedly some may have nothing to do with the EU but.....)

Having the electrical items ( hair dryers, cassette players) logged into you passport and checked off again when you flew back out of greece.
Having the cash your taking out logged on your passport.
Having that cash amount limited
Having to complete entry forms and actually having them checked by Spanish Border guards.Some of whom aren't nice.
( being treated like a Lord if your job title was ""General" Manager , General Foreman of even General Labourer.
Counting how many bottles had broken in suitcases in the carousel
 
Just for some of the younger posters what are some of the things you remember about travel before the EU?
(Admittedly some may have nothing to do with the EU but.....)

Having the electrical items ( hair dryers, cassette players) logged into you passport and checked off again when you flew back out of greece.
Having the cash your taking out logged on your passport.
Having that cash amount limited
Having to complete entry forms and actually having them checked by Spanish Border guards.Some of whom aren't nice.
( being treated like a Lord if your job title was ""General" Manager , General Foreman of even General Labourer.
Counting how many bottles had broken in suitcases in the carousel
Leaving passport with the hotel porter in Spain for the police to carry out night checks.
 
Leaving passport with the hotel porter in Spain for the police to carry out night checks.

Not using a credit card (foreigners cant be trusted to handle it!) or your bank card and PIN, but instead taking travelers cheques that you'd then shop around for Greek supermarkets for the best exchange rate for.

Getting the British newspapers, but a day late, from the same Greek supermarket.

I'm too young to remember pre-EU, but that's certainly something I remember from holidays as a child in the 80's & early 90's.
 
Dare anyone mention blue passports, whoops I did. ;)

I can remember going on holiday with the school and we only had a card with our picture on. Non of this passport malarkey in the 70's.

We never went abroad when I lived at home and always holidayed in Britain. A week in Carmarthen Bay, with the 6am express going past the camp to wake you up on a morning and then the RAF practicing bombing runs at 2pm every day was enough to put the strains on any family.

Only the rich went abroad pre-EU and the working class stayed at home and prayed for good weather.

What have the EU ever done for us? ;)
 
I can remember when bottled water was just something you saw when you went abroad on holiday. Back then the idea of buying plastic bottles full of water at 2000x the price of perfectly good tap water at home would have seemed ridiculous.

(It still is to me)

That's a good one, I think that's the only time all year we had bottled water was when we were on holiday, as you "cant trust the tap water over here".
 
Did a trip on a coach around Europe in 84. France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. Bleeding nightmare with all that currency in separate bags from the bank. Not to mention the border checks, I had a face for being checked at nearly every border. Got to a point where an elderly women took me as her son to get through quicker.
 
Not using a credit card (foreigners cant be trusted to handle it!) or your bank card and PIN, but instead taking travelers cheques that you'd then shop around for Greek supermarkets for the best exchange rate for.

Getting the British newspapers, but a day late, from the same Greek supermarket.

I'm too young to remember pre-EU, but that's certainly something I remember from holidays as a child in the 80's & early 90's.
I know people who still say same about credit cards now.
 
Don't forget those little jugs that looked like a genie's lamp that were used to pour wine/sangria into someone else's mouth. Not sure if they had a proper name, but everyone came back from Spain with a straw donkey and one of those.
They do but I can’t remember it now. Based on traditional wine sacks used a lot in Catalonia.
Sombreros too although I think that was an eighties thing. As one of my Spanish friends once said “nothing shows your love for Spain more than coming home with a Mexican hat”
 
I don't know about abroad but I do remember very clearly that our bit of the UK is was so badly polluted that we were told not to eat the shellfish that was in our waters. The Scandinavian countries were forever complaining about acid rain caused by our power station emissions. We weren't called the dirty man of Europe for nothing.
 
Back
Top