Flying Winnipeg - Calgary - Amsterdam - Berlin, when do I go through customs?

Upvote:1

It all depends on your ticket, and if it's a single through ticket/booking or not.

If you have one ticket for the whole thing, then on arrival into Amsterdam you will go through Immigration and enter the Schengen area. Your bags will have been checked all the way through (check your baggage tags at checkin to ensure they did!), and will be transferred for you. On arrival in Berlin, you will collect your bags, and clear customs with them there. You will need to follow the Green (nothing to declare) or Red (goods to declare) channel as appropriate. (They won't have the green edge on their baggage tags which intra-EU bags get). At very small airports, there may not be a manned Red channel, in which case you'd need to ring up customs if you had something to declare.

If you have one ticket from Canada to Amsterdam, then a different one from Amsterdam to Berlin, then you will need to clear Immigration in Amsterdam (entering the Schengen area), then go and collect your bags. You and your bags then clear customs, following (almost) the same rules as you would in Berlin. You then go to your new airline's check in desk, and check your bags back in. Your bags will get new luggage tags, including the green intra-EU stripe on the end. On arrival in Berlin, you collect your bags and similarly leave through the either the Green or Red channels but this time more permissive rules would technically apply, since your last flight was inside the EU and your luggage now has green stripes (of course, that won't make a difference for you unless you went on a shopping spree while waiting in Amsterdam, but those are the rules…).

Upvote:2

Since your connecting flight to Berlin will be an intra-Schengen flight, you'll need to clear immigration at AMS.

Luggage may be checked through to Berlin if it's all on one ticket and you'll then clear customs in Berlin. Make sure to ask on checking to have your luggage checked through though, this is not necessarily automatic, even if flights are on the same ticket!

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