Schengen 'clock-stop' countries?

Aribo, perhaps there's a direct correlation between the kind of people that overstay in the Schengen zone and the kind of people that have an inability to give detail...

Gocanucks said:
just reporting my personal experience since he asked

This is in fact what ariellev asked:
how risky is that ?
Ariellev didn't ask for personal experience but wanted to know "how risky" it is if someone overstays. So just how risky is it, gocanucks? Do you know what the odds are of getting caught and, more importantly, what the penalties are if you're caught? If you think that your experience is of any use here, I'm afraid I don't agree. You don't even say where and when you left Schengen and under what circumstances. But even if you had included that information, it still wouldn't have answered the question.

All you can do is tell people what has happened to you in the past. You can't tell what is going to happen to ariellev in the future.

#20 it seems you hit the nail on the head...

Chill guys. I'm not recommending anything, just reporting my personal experience since he asked
I couldn't care less if you recommend overstaying Schengen or not; all I asked you was to provide more details. I'm afraid I have to agree with tony_b that a vagueish statement like #16 is in no way helpful to ariellev, nor to any other people reading this.

Ariellev asked:
how risky is that?

I'm afraid there is no way that a TT poster can answer that because the data simply isn't available to us. We have no idea whatsover of how many get checked, how many overstay, how many of those get caught, how many get through without getting caught.

Not only that, each country is different and cirumstances can change just like that. I'll give you an example. Leave Schengen via Spain on a Monday, and you might not be checked. There's an ETA incident on the Tuesday and everybody is checked on the Wednesday.

No individual story is of any use to you at all, not when you think of the millions of non-EU visitors who pass through immigration every year.

All I can say is that France appears not to care for holders of US, Canadian and Australian passports. I know people of those 3 nationalities who have been living in Paris for years and flying in and out at will with no problem -- sometimes just once a year and therefore clearly not respecting the rules.

A lot of the other Schengen countries takes the rules more seriously.

Note: I was in Schengen today, not just the zone but the village itself on the Moselle.