Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - getting cash in europe

Here is the recap (again) of what we did for my daughter for her two semesters in France:

Schwab Bank - this is a 100% free, interest bearing (not that that means anything right now), checking account with a $100 opening deposit requirement. There are no ATM fees to withdraw money from any ATM. As others have said, European ATM's don't charge fees so no problem there. For US banks - Schwab will reimburse you the fee the other bank charged you for withdrawing from their terminal. The Foreign Exchange fee is either 0 or 1%. This is a great card for travelers anywhere.

There was only one slight glitch - the card is Visa branded. Schwab, like many other banks, hires an outside contractor to monitor for fraud. Calling and telling your bank that you are traveling is a good idea but still might not prevent them from calling to check on your "unusual" spending. They called to the U.S. and of course, wouldn't talk to me, but they never FROZE her account - it was just the "heads up" type call that you sometimes get. In hindsight, I wish I had set it up as a joint account so that I would have authorization to speak to them. Again, nothing happened with the account except for confusion on my part as to whether they needed to talk to my daughter.

My daughter did open a French account as well because she was paid by check for working in the language lab. Opening this account was easy, closing it was VERY difficult so I wouldn't necessarily recommend a European account unless there is a good reason for it. I'm pretty sure she paid for her dorm room out of her Schwab account, but not sure how that worked.

She also had a credit card - so in worst case scenarios - i.e. if there was trouble getting cash from an ATM, she could still purchase a train ticket, etc. with a CC. But the transaction fee for the CC was 3% so she did not use it.

As for the "bring cash to begin with" question -I personally don't do this unless I have leftover cash that will work in the country I am going to. We traveled to Switzerland last March (to get to daughter in Strasbourg) and did not arrange for Swiss Francs ahead of time. I got them in the airport. I think I gave my daughter some leftover Euros for her arrival in France, but it wasn't much. Upon landing she got money & purchased a French cell phone (all in the airport) - you can see why this might raise a Fraud Alert!