estaten

After reading all the post on phone stratagies in central europe it appears that the best aproach may be to use prepaid purchased phone cards from your hotel room. As I understand it IF the card is purchased over there as opposed to one purchased in the USA before travel and if it has the European equevlent of an 800 # you can use it from your hotel room to call home with no hotel charges. Am I misunderstanding this?

Also, is there no charge from the hotel for incoming calls from home?

All of the mobile phone information is quite framkly way too complicated for me. It seems that if there is an emergency the people at home just call the hotel. leave a message and you use the prepaid card to call home with only the normal card charges..Right??

xyz123

Actually info about mobile phones is simpler than calling cards. Why? Because every hotel has its own policies and quite frankly in many countries I have had difficulty reaching the local 800 number from some phones and some hotels, not all, charge even for using a local 800 number. Yes it is always free to receive calls in your hotel and if you have a hotel list for every night fine.

But a mobile phone goes with you everywhere and once you know the # in a particular country it never changes. Or if you get riiing, it never changes no matter where in Central (or Western or Eastern) Europe you are.

As I've said, it almost seems that every kid 10 years old and up has a mobile phone in Europe and the number of functioning pay phones is slowly becoming smaller and smaller.

What is so difficult to deal with about mobile phone technology. As noted if your US carrier is either Cingular or T mobile you already are well on the way to having a functional albeit expensive European mobile phone.

Or upon arrival in a country, go into a local mobile phone store, they're probably on every corner in most European cities and within 10 minutes you will have a fully functional mobile phone and then you can text message the number (or e mail it) to those who need to know it.

You realize that emergencies do not occur during the evening while you are in Europe and in your hotel room.

Look again, if a 10 year old kid in Europe can deal with a mobile phone, I doubt extremely that you need a degree in brain surgery to deal with one while in Europe even if you think the posts are complex.

Sim card? A little chip that goes into a phone.

Roaming? Using a mobile phone outside its area of local service which in Europe is an entire country.

Riiing? A fairly new service based in Liechtenstein which allows you to receive calls for free throughout almost all of Western, Central and Eastern Europe.

Trust me, you can deal with it and once you have it down pat, you will wonder why you ever doubted it was so difficult to understand.

Travelnut

I am very satisfied with my 'baby step' of using T-Mobile, a GSM phone, and their $0.99/min rate, since it is only for 'emergency' or quick check on the house-sitter. Otherwise, we use email.

With T-Mobile, my phone # is the same for home/personal/travel - we no longer have even a land-line in our house. I use the 300-min/free weekends plan for $29.99, and there is no charge for using the International plan, other than the per-minute charges.

ira

Hi es,

Hotels have different policies re whether there is a charge for dialing an 800 number.

You have to ask the hotel.

In the event of a true emergency, what difference does the cost of a phone call make?

StCirq

A cell phone is WAY more simple than trying to decipher the various hotel 800 number schemes in Europe, plus it's available 24/7, whereas the 800 number, if it's available, is only usable if you're IN your hotel room, which in all likelihood you won't be if there's a true emergency.

There's nothing terribly complicated about having a cell phone in Europe, although I must admit it took me quite a few days to figure out my new Liechtenstein-based service (not for making calls, but for how to receive them), but still in the end it was pretty straightforward, once I figured out that Liechtenstein had a 3-numeral country code.

rex

I have faced a $13 charge to use an "800" number for a one minute call to my wife to tell her to call me back. At the Hotel Giada (whereI will never stay again) in Florence, and I could not figure any way around this.

Made me a cell phone convert.

Best wishes,

Rex

ira

>I have faced a $13 charge to use an "800" number for a one minute call to my wife to tell her to call me back. At the Hotel .... and I could not figure any way around this.<

Leave room. Close door. Take elevator or stairs to lobby. Exit building. Go left to phone booth. Call wife.

Reverse procedure back to room.

Pick up phone when it rings.

xyz123

....or use a mobile phone with riiing and enlinea and call wife for 12¢/minute from comfort of room.

Keith

Earlier this month, the Glasgow Marriott wanted £1 for each 0800 call. A small guest house in Edinburgh charged nothing.

Keith