Champagne, fireworks, strangers hugging each other: despite freezing cold, thousands came out on December 21, 2007, to celebrate in cities like Zittau (where Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland meet) and Frankfurt/Oder at the German-Polish border, as well as on the border between Slovakia and Austria. They gathered to witness a historic event in places where concrete barriers, spring-guns, and soldiers with machine guns had once separated the peoples of Europe. At the stroke of midnight on the above-mentioned date, the last borders between Western and Eastern Europe were removed. Eighteen years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Eastern European member states of the European Union had officially become parties to the Schengen Agreement. The agreement now covers approximately 3.6 million square kilometers, enabling 400 million Europeans to travel freely and without passport controls through 24 countries – from Iceland and Portugal to Italy and the Baltic states. Along with being a triumph for freedom and a symbol of unity and international understanding, the Schengen Agreement has a very practical side to it, as it has done away with traffic jams at border checkpoints.