Well I remember the fun days of crossing borders before EU, ordering stuff from computer magazines from other countries, having to deal how to pay them across countries, and so forth.

I also happened to work in Switzerland, before they made cross-region agreements with EU, and it was lot of burecratic fun, explaining the situation regarding a Portuguese, living in France and working in Switzerland.

I'm mid fourties and I remember bordercrossings were annoying back in the 90ies. I'm Danish so we didn't enter Schengen until around 2000. I guess it didn't help that I was young enough that we traveled by bus. Once when we were on a school trip to Prauge we had the Slovakia borderpatrol go through our entire bus while waving machineguns around.

I guess you never tried to cross the Iron Curtain in your youth?

The sane side of the iron curtain. We've envied you for the longest time.