I will be leaving for Croatia soon and will need to call back to the states for both work and personal reasons. What is the best way? My friend will lend me his international phone which has a chip for Italy. Can I buy a "Croatia" chip? Would I be better off buying some type of phone card? Please give me some insight as I am clueless. Thank you for all suggestions.

I always use an MCI card. Very cheap to call back to the states. I call home everyday while I am traveling in Europe.

I checked out Croatia and their access number is 0800-22-0112
Croatia
{Prepaid cards not allowed} You can not use the card from a pay phone. It also says international calls can be made from most

sorry - I didn't mean to send the posting yet.

International country to country calls are availble in most locations in Croatia

http://www.infostation.org/mci_access_numbers.html#C


I have used my MCI card in many countries but not Croatia. I was able to use the MCI card when my friend's ATT card would not work.

I am not sure what they mean by prepaid card. You may want to check with MCI.

Since MCI gives an access number for Croatia you should be able to call from your hotel phone or business phone. But you must check with the hotel because some hotels will charge you for a call even if you use a calling card.
I have not been charged but have heard of it being done.

I understand that some of the internet cafes have access to Skype, or you can load it on your computer if you're taking a lap top. My daughter is in Spain and we talk several times a day for free over our computers, and I also have the called forwarded to my cell for 2 cents a minute.

Check out www.voyportmobile.com I'm going to get a SIM card from them for my own cell phone when I got to the UK next month. They provide SIM cards for different countries, or you can purchase phones from them, if you're own personal cell doesn't use SIM cards.

Thank you for your thoughts. I will check into the MCI card and the SIM card. My son lives in Hong Kong and uses Skype -I'm just not familiar with how it works and we may be in some places where we won't have internet access.

If you buy a local SIM card in Croatia, you could also download MO-Call to your mobile. If you get a Croatian SIM, you install the free app onto your mobile and just use your phone like normal to make cheap international mobile calls. Visit www.mo-call.com to find out a bit more

soleil - On our trip to Croatia earlier this year, we took an unlocked quad band phone (sounds like what your friend has), and bought and int'l SIM card from United Mobile before we left.

It was so easy and really convenient to have a cell phone so that we could easily make and receive calls. You can also set up auto-recharge so that you don't have to worry about reloading. We actually just lent the phone w/ SIM to our friends going to Germany.

Have a great trip!

I've had good luck with Pin cards purchased from local tobacco shops and internet cafes that sell long distance calls.

If I were to use a cell phone it would be with a locally purchased SIM card. I haven't done it yet but may on the next trip. My razr phone will work but it's too expensive to pay $1 per minute for every call.

If you do not need to receive calls and will have a phone where you are staying, the cheapest is usually to purchase a long-distance calling card in the country you are calling from. Pennies per minute for calls to North America if you shop carefully. Sorry I can't give specifics for Croatia but I've done very well with this method in Spain and Italy (approx $5 bought 120 minutes or more).