I thought they worked in groups of 3: one knows how to write, the second knows how to read, and the third is there to keep an eye on the dangerous intellectuals.

> Now Germany Poland, Austria and also other EU states introduce "temporary" border checks. Which they keep extending. Great.

Yeah. Though I live close to a Slovakia-Austria border crossing and use it frequently and it is quite apparent these are border checks in the name only. Pedestrians and bikers are not checked at all; passenger cars are waved through and only vans and busses seem to be actually stopped for a check and even that depends. Still sucks compared to no border police presence at all.

Correct, and not just Germany. I have travelled all over Europe by bus and train. In recent years borders have been making a comeback, despite Schengen. Buses are target number 1 for border police.

Last year my bus took nearly an hour to get across the Serbia-Croatia border, which is technically a Schengen border, but Serbia is surrounded by Europe so security is usually lax. We all had to get off and go through passport control while the police combed the bus. Meanwhile, car traffic was being waved through without the slightest formality. Infuriating.

Btw, long distance busses have a really strange history in Germany.

The literal Nazis made a law that virtually banned long distance busses inside of Germany, and the market was only liberalised in 2013. Deregulation and liberalisation often get a bad rep, but they have done a lot for us.

(To be more precise, the Nazis didn't outright ban long distance busses directly, what they did was give the government railway monopoly a veto over most bus routes and lots of extra restrictions. Which amounted to the same result as a ban. Just like the US doesn't directly ban buying from the world's most popular electric car brand or importing photovoltaic cells: they just slap outrageous 100%+ tariffs on them.)