Credit/ATM Cards
 

One of my guidebooks says that very few places in Germany accept credit cards. <BR> <BR>I will be traveling in the countryside, southern Germany and the Acquitaine region of France. <BR> <BR>Will I have a problem using credit cards or finding ATM machines. <BR> <BR>Thanks

I haven't been to France in years but I have spent considerable time recently in Germany and other european countries. I have never experienced problems with VISA or Mastercards. On my most recent trips abroard, I have lived on ATM machines. They are everywhere and give you better exchange rates than banks or other cash conversion outlets. If I were you I would have no concerns. <BR> <BR>Have a great trip. <BR> <BR>Larry

Sydney, We just returned from a quick trip to the Alsace and upper Black Forest and had no problems with Visa or our ATM cards, in fact one of the reasons for the trip was to check this out since we're going back to the same regions for a 3 week trip on our bikes, in April/May.

<BR>Anyone know if there's a website or somewhere to get a listing of ATM card locations in France? Is it similar to the U.S., where they can be found everywhere? Particularly in Paris? Also, as anyone used their ATM cards in Italy?

Are there alot of ATMs in Amsterdam, paris and berlin? We would like to use are cards there.

We've found it easy to access funds from ATM's all over Europe - even in the small towns. At the few tiny villages where there is not even a bank, there is always a business in town, whether a restaurant or market, that will do a small cash advance on an ATM card. <BR>

Thanks to everyone for the reassurance. My plastic and I are ready to travel.

Here's the website for locating international ATM's http://www.mastercard.com/atm/

About the only glitch I encountered was once in Lauterbrunnen Switzerland, my none of my cards would work at one bank. <BR>But was plastered with Master Card logos. Down the stree was a "Visa Bank" and my check card got out the money. <BR>You might want to have a check card as well as the standard ATM card just to be sure. I had no problem with the standard ATM card from NationsBank at a big bank in Luzern. <BR>

We used ATMs regularly, but ran into a problem at the Amsterdam airport machine. It "stole" my wife's ATM, refused to give it back and a fellow working at the attached kiosh said it was kept for "security." I then used my ATM card, same account number and had no problems. What was the difference? Her's had a 01/01 expiration, my had 09/99. Perhaps the machine was not ready for Y2K? Now, we have cards that expire 12/99 and cards for the year 2000 <BR>for our travels.

FYI to all: A fellow poster advised me where to locate a listing of ATM locations, so check out this website. <BR>Regarding your post on Fodor's, go to http://www.abcnews.com, click on "travel", then click on "travel kit". You can then scroll down to find links to MC & VISA sites. (Thanks Mike!) <BR>

We went to all the trouble to copy the list of ATM locations from Cirrus and ended up throwing it away. I was almost never out of line-of-sight of an ATM machine anywhere in London or in several large, medium, and small towns in Denmark. It was faster to just walk/drive around looking for one than to find the address on a map.