Travel to 45, not 25 countries with the Schengen visa! ;-)

Posted on by wonderwanderer

As a Vietnamese, apart from traveling to 9 other countries in ASEAN without a visa, I need a visa almost everywhere else in the world. This is really frustrating for a travel addict like me, not just because it’s costly (visa application fee, travel insurance fee, sometimes transportation fee to the embassy as some embassy only has one visa location in a country), but also time-consuming and especially you can not guarantee you will get a visa with all these frustrations.

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Hamburg, January 2013

Recently I’ve just done a research (with my friend) about all the countries where I can travel without a visa. As a student in Spain and working professional to be in Germany, I am holding a Schengen visa and a residence permit. Interestingly, apart from 25 Schengen states where I can travel visa-free, I can also enter 20 other countries with my Schengen visa or residence permit. So if you come from a country with restricted visa exemptions like me (I guess those includes communist countries like Vietnam, China, North Korea, Cuba, as well as Russia and India – which in total account for about 35% of the world population :D), I guess the following lists will be helpful for you. With a Schengen visa, you can travel to almost 25% of the world without a visa! 😉

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Prague, December 2012

25 Schengen States:

  1. Austria
  2. Belgium
  3. Czech Republic
  4. Denmark
  5. Estonia
  6. Finland
  7. France
  8. Germany
  9. Greece
  10. Hungary
  11. Iceland
  12. Italy
  13. Latvia
  14. Lithuania
  15. Luxembourg
  16. Malta
  17. Netherlands
  18. Norway
  19. Poland
  20. Portugal
  21. Slovakia
  22. Slovenia
  23. Spain
  24. Sweden
  25. Switzerland

Source: http://www.schengenvisa.cc/

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Stockholm, September 2011

20 countries you can enter with Schengen visa:

1. Chile
2. Ecuador
3. Uruguay
4. Costa Rica
5. Mexico
6. Panama
7. Cuba
8. Madagascar
9. Seychelles
10. Albania
11. Andorra
12. Bulgaria
13. Croatia
14. Turkey
15. Romania
16. Cyprus
17. Monaco
18. Lichtenstein
19. Vatican
20. Haiti

Source: http://www.projectvisa.com/

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Andorra, May 2013

Disclaimer: some of the countries above (eg: Monaco, Andorra, Vatican) are visa free to all nationalities, but they are inside or in between Schengen countries, therefore you need a Schengen visa. Some countries like Cuba are visa free to all nationalities, regardless whether you hold a Schengen visa or not.