Is it better to purchase them here or in Europe. I will be calling someone in Croatia from Austria, and may also be making calls from Croatia and the Czech Republic. Where is the best place to purchase them if bought in USA (Wal-marts?). If purchased in Austria, where do you get them?

I'd buy in the country you are going - for instance in Holland the phone cards have a little chip that works in their phone booths. You usually can buy them everywhere, magazine stands, tobacco shops, drugstores. And the airport when you land.

In January we were very happy with a $20 MCI card purchased in a Costco.
We used it to make over 15 phone calls (averaging 5-7 minutes or so each)to the USA from Paris, with plenty of minutes left over. I"m taking the same card with me for my April trip to Prague.

I meant to add:
The card comes with information on access codes for each European country.
We dialed the access codes from our hotel rooms without any charges from the hotel. As you place each call, a recording lets you know how many minutes you have left on the card, it started out I think with 300-400 or so, but these are used at a faster rate for international calls than if you are using it just locally.

Better to use this card http://worldcheapcalls.com
much cheaper and good service

What kind of phone do you have? Will it work in Europe?

Hi
Be careful using your phone in Europe. I have a Cingular phone which is a GSM and runs in Europe. We signed up for the international service from Cingular last Sept. Unfortunately a glitch occured and the phone was not set for international calls. We bought a card at an internet cafe and Berlin for 5 eu for 600 min. We were able to use it throughour our trip to Germany though we used the hotel phones. Cingular charged a $5 connect fee plus .99c per minute. We did much better with the card we bought. So much for Cingular.

ADVERTISING ALERT: 2 posts from vikochka advertising phone card website

always beware of using ANY phone card accessing from hotel. even if you dial FREE number, you may be charged for minutes using the hotel's phone system.
go to lobby and use public phone or in larger hotel lobby or restaurant, museum,etc.

best to buy 5 euro card in country you arrive at, ( usually all the news stands sell them, and call centers, OR go to the calling booths to make calls and pay just for what you have spoken. these call centers usually have internet,too.

i would imagine you would spend no more than $5 a week calling or using internet in this way, unless you talk for hours, and not minutes.

Note that vikochka pulled up a couple of old threads to spam.

Has never posted anything but plugs for that website.

Keith

We took an MCI card just recently to Europe, the only tricky thing is that you had to have the country specific accesss number to call from EACH country, and you had to get that before you left the states. Also, we couldn't call from our hotel in Spain because in Spain the "bad" numbers are all 1-800, and their toll free are 1-900, so the 800 number to access our card was blocked, but it worked fine from the pay phones. Internet cafes are WAY cheap and plentiful.

Sorry but I beg to differ that internet cafes are plentiful-depends on what country you are in.For example-Rome has limited ones to be found. The best bet is ALWAYS calling cards from the country you are in that can be purchased at any tabac/tobacco shop or newstand. "Banana" in Germany/"Eurotel" in England are some of the great 5 Euro/ 5 pound examples for 200 minutes. You can use any of those cards by dialing 9 for an outside line from your hotel room and then use the 800 numbers with pin code.I travel overseas everyweek and use these exclusively to stay in touch with my family;make appointments,etc.Well worth the money but keep in mind that there is a time limit on them-usually 4-6 weeks before they become invalid.

I agree that the MCI card that you can get from Costco is great for calling the US, but may cost more (in terms of minutes it takes from the total) to call another country from outside the US. Note - take local phone numbers for your US airline if you think you may have to reach them, MCI doesn't allow calls to US 800 numbers.