Some discussion about Lebara in France:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...m#last-comment

Lavandula

Ok, so I went to a Lidl store, and at the cash register area there seems to be two options, both 9.95EU. One is called Classic Tarif and other is called Lidl Mobile SIM.

1. What is the difference? Which one to buy?
2. Now, if I buy a SIM there, how does it get activated? I mean all I see there is a busy cash register lady zooming the item thru the bar code scanner. I expect all she does is to take my 9.95EU and hand me a SIM, then what? Would I find out that I need a German address and perhaps a German bank account number?

I used local SIMs in Austria and Germany and here is my experience.

Austria: I chose DREI because I read about it and it was close to my hotel. The 10€ plan required 25€ expenditure after adding 5€ activation and 10€ for SIM card. I got 500MB data. The coverage in Vienna and through Wachau valley was good. This SIM had no roaming partners I could connect in Czech, Germany, or in Netherlands. When I tried to connect any of the potential network carriers, I got error messages.

Germany: I talked to several vendors. O2, E-plus, Vodafone salesperson claimed I could not get a prepaid SIM because I was just a visitor without a German address. I was not sure if this was really the case or the salesperson did not want to be bothered with a tourist. I then found blau.de who sold me a 9.90€ prepaid SIM with 200MB and all I had to supply was my name and my birthday. The blau.de worked very well throughout Germany, but I could not connect to any potential roaming partners in Netherlands. I then purchased a LIDL SIM without much info. You get ZERO support since LIDL is just a convenience store bigger than a typical 7-Eleven. I paid 9.95€ and I got a do-it-yourself SIM package. When I opened the package, I thought I just wasted 9.95€ when I saw a form asking for a German address and a bank account asking to send the form in by FAX or by mail to activate the card. I noticed it had an online registration option. Ok, since you don’t have mobile internet activate yet, you have to use WiFi or other internet device, got it? I filled out the form with hotel address. Then the next page asked for German bank account info, and I thought I was stuck, but I noticed there was on option for refill card. When I clicked that option, the bank info form got greyed out and I sailed my way to completing the online form. The SIM was active in about an hour. LIDL SIM was the only SIM I purchased that registered successfully to a roaming partner in Netherland. I did not see any Lebara outlet during the trip. O2 and Vodafone were everywhere.

What Greg said. Just back from six weeks in Germany. Took an Ipad, and an unlocked phone. On arrival, removed the Australian Sim cards from the Ipad, and the phone, and bought cards from Lidl for 9.95. Same procedure as Greg to register the Sims. Everything worked well for my stay, and when I left I replaced the Australian Sims and everything was back to 'normal'. Could have been easier but can't think how.

One thing we experienced in Germany and Austria in July was that the "free wifi" at the hotels didn't always work that good. Usually when we got back to the room at night and wanted to skype or check on the next days events we had issues with them being slow and unresponsive. In the mornings it worked great. Just my experiences. This was hotels in Munich and Salzburg. The wifi at our friends house West of Stuttgart worked good except for the noticeable slow down in the evenings. We rented international smart phones from Verizon. They worked great and we used the data sparingly.

I spent a total of 11 weeks in Europe last summer, mostly Bavaria, as I was working. Also traveled to Austria and Sweden to visit friends. I ever purchased a card for my ipad, but counted on wifi...it worked in the hotel I worked at, but not at the apt. on the property where I live., so a bit inconvenient. I bought a unlocked Blackberry, the first card I was sold was wrong, the second came with a free phone, I needed help to reload it, as all directions were done on the phone in German. I found free wifi is pretty rare...