Not sure if I understand the problem correctly.

If you literally only need/want to communicate with your five hosts I assume you can already give your hosts the estimated time of arrival with the trains you plan to use.

If your host in Brussels wants to know that you actually arrived at Brussels Gare Central or elsewhere, why not pick up a payphone once you got there and call him or her?
You will have euro coins in your pocket anyway, and against common believe payphones are still available and a local call won't cost you more than 20 or 50 cents.
Even an "international" call from Amsterdam to Brussels won't break your bank and will cost maybe one euro or less to relay the information that you are about to board the train.

Cawboy, it was mentioned in the OP that there was once a $20 charge for using a phone in a train station. And it is true there are private ripoff pay phones in certain locations. While they do not systematically overcharge, some of them make it very difficult to pay the correct price. So it is a legitimate concern.

Frankly, most strangers will let you use their phone these days if you ask nicely. And in a year or two (too late for this trip, I know), there will be no more roaming charges within the EU. As it is, the charges have been reduced dramatically over recent years.

"You will have euro coins in your pocket anyway, and against common believe payphones are still available and a local call won't cost you more than 20 or 50 cents."

That was not my experience in Florence. The apartment agent did not accept my "estimated" arrival but was oh-so-busy and wanted me to call upon arrival so he would have a 20 minute window. Went to a payphone which DID NOT ACCEPT COINS, credit card only. Put in my credit card and made the call. He could not hear me, but I could hear him (or was it the other way around?). Later, my credit card bill showed a $20 charge for this horrible exchange. Here in the US, most payphones also do not accept coins anymore, only credit cards.

Some of these locations are five train connections apart, so it's not going to be easy to predict my arrival time.

Even the old France Télécom pay phones had a nasty "trick" when they started accepting Visa and MasterCard. While the rates were the same for making phone calls as other payment methods, there was something like a minimum 10€ monthly charge. So it was perfectly fine for people who made a lot of phone calls and used up 10€ worth -- but not so nice for people who had made just one or two calls and didn't notice that there was a monthly minimum.

I see.
Well, you inquiry was about Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. At least in Germany you can use any pay phone also with coins. And I am also pretty sure about Belgium.
Anyway, I would not advise you to use credit cards.
But as it had been mentioned above, any connectivity that relies on public WiFi to place calls via Skype or similar will be pretty useless when you change trains somewhere at minor station in Germany or France.

The easiest workaround may be kerouc's advise to just ask someone else to use his mobile phone. Most local plans come with free national calling or very cheap rates of a few cents per minute.

But I must admit that apartment agents who make you as the customer jump through loops because they are not able to wait 15 minutes for you (but are late themselves, because oh-so-busy) are my pet peeve.

We have done this rental-in-Europe-with-no-phone about 7 times. In the one case that the owner did not accept a pre-arranged time we asked a stranger to borrow his phone and he let us. Generally it is considered quite strange to be phoneless by Europeans.

The app Voxofon may work with you as a WIFI phone in Europe with free calling (you get free credits for installing game apps, like 2 min per game) but I either got voicemail or the call did not go thru with a recording in Italian. So I had no satisfactory experience but it might work for you.

>Robert, yes I've considered that but of course my two year commitment is still ongoing, so cannot do that until later in the year<

I believe that T-Mobile will buy out you 2-year contract. Check with them to be sure.

I will admit to not having read every post. But here is what we do and I've never been sorry.

I bought a phone from mobile.com. This is not T-mobile, but a separate company.

It works in countries all over the world, but not the US. It is attached to a credit card.

The number of the phone is a UK number. I'm only charged per call.

Before I leave home, I make sure that the phone is charged, and the CC is current.

I've had it for years. I'm actually on my second phone. Somehow, no one talks about this anymore, but it's still a perfect solution for us.

I'm an idiot.

It is mobal.com

Try it.

https://www.mobal.com/international-cell-phones/


When can we please have an edit function? Please.

You would be hard put to find a public telephone in the Netherlands nowadays.

An internet based calling system such as Skype or Google Hangouts needs a good WiFi connection, which is not always easy to find. Some places actually block the use of such systems to keep them from hogging bandwidth.

Either buy a local sim card or even an entire phone in the first country you arrive in, or go the mobal route Tuscan suggests.
If you buy a local sim ask the store to install it, and make sure you can use it in other EU countries.

On the dialling of numbers in Europe if you are calling another country you use +country code number with the first zero, so +31 35 1234567 for the Netherlands for instance, if calling from France, but 035 1234567 if calling from within the Netherlands. The first, full international number will also work just fine btw. It is how I always store phone numbers in my phone.

tuscanlifeedit, do you need new SIM cards when you go from country to country using your phone? I am guessing from your name you do not live in the UK but in the US?

This sounds worth checking out.

You don't necessarily need a new SIM for every country...as long as you can roam in the new country on a partner mobile network. I have done this a few times, but it varies from country to country. Years ago I used my Italian TIM SIM card in Slovenia and Croatia to roam (but roaming rates were high then). Recently, I was unable to use my T-Mobile SIM from Montenegro in Bosnia. It varies.

hetismij2: <i>An internet based calling system such as Skype or Google Hangouts needs a good WiFi connection, which is not always easy to find. Some places actually block the use of such systems to keep them from hogging bandwidth.</i>

Yes, a good WiFi connection, but not necessarily much bandwidth for audio-only calls. Audio uses a surprisingly low amount of bandwidth (whereas video uses much more). Remember, the cell phone network is all digital now, and it is designed to maximize the number of calls that can use the same cell towers. Skype and Google calls use the same audio technology for their calls. As I said above, I made a fairly long call at Schiphol a few months ago using the free airport WiFi, so it can be done.

You don't need to do anything with the mobal.com phone but buy it. As I said, I'm on my second one.

I've had other phones to use internationally but this is by far the easiest solution. No sim cards, no wifi needed.

They send as nice instruction sheet with the phone for dialing around. Sometimes I print a little cheat sheet with dialing instructions to keep in my pocket.

The home number on my phone is a UK number, so I follow the instructions for dialing from the UK, no matter whether I am in Italy, France, the UK, Greece, etc.

I live in the US and can't use this phone here. But neither can I use my Tim Italian phone and I've had trouble with sim cards that expired for that phone.

This is just too easy. mobal.com

Of course, the simplest option for most people is just to keep their existing phone and pay (if necessary) an extra fee to use it in Europe.

I think that in a few years all of the carriers will have followed T-Mobile's lead and will offer cheap international roaming, so none of this will be an issue for travelers anymore.

Well, today I checked out Mobal, and they charge $29 for the cheapest phone, plus $10 delivery, plus $1 per minute in country, $2 per minute for other countries (which is what I'll be doing - calling the next country). So that's more than Sprint - and with Sprint I keep my familiar phone and pay only $5 for the plan.

So it's sounding like the best (simplest and least costly in the long run) is to go with my current phone.

Thanks for the dialing tips - invaluable.

And yes, maybe I'll check with T Mobile and see if they'll buy my business by picking up the fee for breaking my contract with Sprint.

Great advice from all, thanks so much.

Joan,
I was hoping you would do a simple comparison between the mobal and Sprint to realize it would be cheaper and simpler just to use your own Sprint phone. Hats off to the mobal marketing who has managed to convince who knows how many Americans to use mobal phones when many of the recent smartphones from any U.S. carriers have European frequency compatible GSM phone that can be used to lower cost than the mobal while retaining the use of their own numbers.

It does not have to be all Sprint. If you happen to walk by a phone store, just hop in to see if they would sell a prepaid SIM card that roams to other countries to those without a local address. If they don't, you used up just a few minutes. If they do, you have an upside.

Another thing about t-mobile. Those from the U.S. somehow equate using t-mobile U.S. SIM to switching the home plan. This is totally unnecessary as long a you are willing to use a different U.S. number when using the T-mobile SIM. T-mobile U.S. plan is month to month. Sign up for a month then cancel. Additional phones are cheaper to add. Remember that with t-mobile U.S. you get DATA roaming at no additional cost. TEXT is unlimited and free! While riding a train from Switzerland to Germany, the phone status changed from Swisscom 3G to Deutsche Telekom 3G followed by an assuring text message from the T-mobile U.S. that the Data roaming is included in the plan in Germany.

In order to harness the full functionality of t-mobile U.S. SIM, you need a t-mobile branded smartphone eventually. It can do WiFi calling. You can continue to call even without cell signal using your own phone number on WiFi. Everything, including voice, is unlimited in this mode. This is a godsend as MIL calls my wife all the time and all her calls are at least one hour long. Even at $0.10/min to receive, I still have to pay. If we do this at hotel on WiFi, my MIL continues to call our U.S. number as if we are still at home in the U.S. and it costs us nothing even when she talks for hours. There is no way the MIL can use Skype or use a different number bought from Skype. It has to be the one and the one number she knows dialing the same way.

There's no point in paying $50 to signup for T-Mobile for one month with a different number, when Joan only needs to make a few calls and barely use the phone the rest of the trip. It's far easier to sign up for the Sprint plan for a month, and I don't see how T-Mobile saves any money(?). Joan probably doesn't need data at all - if you read her original post, all she needs is a way to make a few phone calls to apartment landlords.

I took her original comment about only needing to use the phone on WiFi literally. In that case, something like Google Hangouts would make practical sense. But it seems she may need to use it at train stations, where free WiFi may not be available. Buying a local SIM is probably the cheapest approach in that case, but it's more complicated. I'm frugal and I do it, but I'm not intimidated by these kinds of things - some are. That's why paying more and using Sprint probably makes the most sense for her.

If Joan can get good T-Mobile service at home in the US (I do where i live but some can't), she might consider switching to T-Mobile if they will pay her contract termination fee - but it's not clear she'll even be able to use her existing phone on T-Mobile permanently. A T-Mobile store would help her figure out options.

---
(This isn't really for you, Joan, so feel free to ignore.)

As for someone at home (your MIL?) not being able to call a different phone number: an easy solution to that is to forward the number (a cell number) while you are gone to another number - a Skype number or Google number, even a European number on a local SIM (look into a service called Localphone). Most cell phone plans include the ability to forward your calls to a different phone number. I used to forward my cell calls to my Skype number when I went to Europe, before there was a "Google Hangouts" option.

You can even port your existing cell number - permanently - to Google Voice if you want (costs $20 one-time fee then use Google Voice in the US on your phone to make calls using voice minutes or Google Hangouts using data/WiFI (Hangouts works anywhere - whereas Google Voice won't work in Europe). I use my Google Voice number as my primary phone number now at home. I'm not suggesting this for Joan, though.

I used the "WiFi Calling" feature on my old T-Mobile phone the last time I was in Europe, but my new phone doesn't have WiFi Calling, and I have now dumped T-Mobile anyway. But the Google Hangouts app eliminates the need for "WiFi Calling" - any Android (or iPhone) can use it, no special "WiFi calling" feature required. Because my Google number is already my primary number, I'll use the same number in Google Hangouts, too.