It’s been a few years since I’ve been back but I’m going this year. 
I’ll need to check on the horses - of course! - and need to text and phone my farmsitter. She is not techno savvy so I need to do things the most simply. What is the best plan/phone to do this without breaking the bank?
Thx in advance!
I’m getting ready for a European trip later this year and have been researching this same issue. There are three basic choices:
1-if you have your cell service thru a large provider (Verizon, AT&T, etc), you should be able to add international calling to your plan. Depending on your provider, this can be added by the month, by the days used, or some other set of options. The advantage to this is that you keep your current cell phone number in use. You need to make sure your phone is compatible with the German network. Your provider should be able to help answer this question.
2-you can get a SIM card in Germany and install it in your phone. SIM cards can be purchased with various amounts of call, text, and data amounts, so you can buy only what you think you will need. The advantage is that this is usually the cheapest way to go. The disadvantage is that your phone gets reset with a new German number for the time the SIM is in use, so anyone who will need to communicate with you will need to be given the new number for the trip. Once you are home, put your original SIM card back in the phone and return to normal operation.
3-buy a cheap cell phone in Germany and a service card for the amount of call, text, and data you will need. Again, you will need to share this new number with everyone who needs to contact you. When you return, just turn the phone off, pull the battery, and store it for use on some future trip. Or sell it. Advantage: can be a cheap option. Disadvantage: the whole different number drill.
I, personally, am going with option 1, since there are too many people who might need to contact me. I want to have my familiar number and all the services connected to it fully functional while I am traveling. But that’s neurotic, control-freak me. Your mileage may vary.
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Or used your phone as a computer on WiFi and communicate via email. You should not need to do anything special for this
When you say your farm sitter is technologically not advanced … do they have a smartphone at all?
My 15 y.o. daughter is training in Germany right now prior to Worlds - we use WhatsApp to text and call. She leaves her phone in airplane mode and texts/calls when she has a wifi signal (the barn fortunately has a wifi setup since that’s also where they squad plus chaperones are sleeping but as an adult I’m sure you’ll have a civilized hotel w/wifi, lol).
Anyway, WhatsApp handles phone calls and texts including sending pics and videos (via text) so she can send pictures of the farm or whatever.
Our coach has an old phone he swaps a SIM card into but that’s (also IMO) a pain for a short trip.
We are on Verizon and it also works really well to use international roaming – which is exactly like using your phone at home. The pain is that it’s $10/day per device so for my daughter and myself (using this on our last 2-week trip) racked up hundreds of dollars in charges - mostly centered around my use of google maps.
Some carriers (T-Mobile? AT&T?) are much better about international roaming pricing, either included in data plan or less expensive.
Good luck and have fun!!
I always hook my phone up to WiFi and use WhatsApp.
If you have an android phone, look into Google Fi. I recently switched to them after going on vacation to Iceland where my SO (who had Fi at the time) was able to use data at the same rates he paid in the USA (which are already pretty cheap). It was REALLY convenient. The cell service in the USA isn’t necessarily the greatest coverage but they support wifi calling and texting whenever you have a wifi connection, so I’ve never had a real problem.
While the plan is currently available for iPhones, most of the functionalities I mentioned above are not yet supported on iOS, which makes it more like a regular phone plan.
If this is a one-off trip and the contacts you want to be able to reach aren’t on WhatsApp already or might not have a wifi/data connection at the time you need to reach them (e.g. at the barn), I would think that getting an international calling plan from your current carrier for the duration of your trip is the easiest option. I now do so when I travel abroad. It’s around $70/month with my carrier, and has been totally worth it when I’ve had emergencies arise (e.g. sick animal back home, being hit by another car while driving abroad). Way cheaper than the per-day international roaming that @M’al mentioned, if you can stick within a moderate usage plan and add it to your phone ahead of the trip instead of on a day-by-day basis.
I used to use @ShotenStar 's strategy #3 in the past when traveling in Europe – cheap GSM phone with prepaid minutes. However, the last few times I’ve been to Germany buying a prepaid phone or a SIM card for my old Europe phone hasn’t been an option, as you now have to provide proof of a German address to buy a prepaid SIM card and have it mailed to that address, which makes it too inconvenient for most travelers. A couple years ago when I was trying to coordinate with German colleagues and asked them if there was a place in town to buy a prepaid phone they laughed at me for the antiquated idea of a burner phone and made jokes about The Wire and the hysterical notion that I might be a drug dealer.
If you’re stopping in another European country on the way to Germany you might be able to get a prepaid SIM there and use it in Germany (you can roam throughout Europe on European carriers), but I’d only go this route if you’ve already got an unlocked phone that you can use and you don’t mind switching out the SIM and using a number from another country.
If you already have an unlocked GSM phone, you can also buy a global SIM card and data package in the US before you go that should work in Germany (you can get a US number but it won’t be your regular number). If you travel a ton this might be worth doing. Not sure if it’s worth the savings if your trip is short or you don’t travel abroad very often. It won’t save you money if you don’t already have an unlocked phone.
If you decide to go the wifi route (turn off mobile data and use wifi connections to make calls via an app), be aware that unlimited, easy access wifi isn’t as plentiful in Germany as it is in the U.S. Fewer restaurants and cafes have wifi for customers there. Hotels may give you an access code for a single device per paid guest, and IME hotel wifi tends to be slower and flakier in Germany than in other countries I travel to often. Not sure why, but it’s a trend I’ve noticed over many trips and in many different German cities/towns. If you do want to stick with wifi calling but don’t know if your contacts will be able to use WhatsApp, Skype and Google Voice are alternatives that allow you to call regular numbers (though be aware that you have to pay by the minute on Skype for calls to a phone number vs. calls to another Skype account).
Hope you have a great trip!
Call your provider about a service plan, I think Skype is still free, and maybe you can FaceTime for free too?
Just a heads-up. If you have apps running in the background that use data, you’ll be charged the daily fee
You can get overseas service for a fee from some cell phone carriers. AT&T offers it, you go in and tell them the dates you need the service and they set it up for you. Think it cost my DH a small amount, wasn’t huge and was well worth it. Just make sure the service has been turned on before you take off.
T mobile had service in Europe so data and texting call under the regular plan, no additional fees. Calls are considered international. When we went to Poland my bro bought a prepaid phone when he got there and I just used my phone for everything.
I just use my phone as at home - there is a $2.00 charge per use - but since I don’t chat or use it often, it works for me.
I use Verizon and you can turn their international plan on and off … on a monthly basis. So I just go online and turn on the international plan so that its on when I travel outside the country. I still use wifi when I can to keep roaming down but its nice to be able to text whenever you want whether you have wifi or not.
BTW, the first time I traveled internationally with my phone, I thought, “Who will call? no one.” and got the pay-per-call/text plan. A friend decided to organize a happy hour and sent out a large group text and I got like 30 texts in an hour. Had to call my provider and switch to a day rate.
HA! Oh, that sucks. I dislike those group texts on a regular day! I forget what plan my bro got, some prepaid/unlimited for the month. Him and I texted each other back and forth a good deal and the Polish relatives and friends used that phone. He gave it to my mom when we left as she stayed behind a few weeks.
I did get one call about my horse acting not quite right and getting some banamine but that was the only call.
I was in Germany last October for the TRAK Gala. I just downloaded the WhatsApp Messenger. I didn’t make any changes to my AT&T plan. Used WiFi and called home through the App. Also able to text and to send video/pictures. For those in my travel party in Germany, we messaged each other through the App. Very easy to use and it’s free. I didn’t incur any roaming charges while traveling. Have a great trip!
My current service provider doesn’t offer international so I may switch or use Whatsapp. Whatsapp is only good from cell phone to cell phone with both users having Whatsapp, right?
I travel to Europe several times a year so overseas prepaid sim is the best way for me. You can buy once you’re there or get one here. I use onesimcard which I purchased in the US, its much more affordable for the prepaid data than using my US sim would be. It has cheaper data packages in certain countries (which are the ones i’m usually in). It is limited data before you have to refill it, but as long as you turn off the data sucking apps and don’t sit there watching youtube videos and uploading photos, it lasts between 2 weeks to a month on one data package for me. It was even cheaper when I had an Italian prepaid sim so eventually I want to do that again but mine expired and thats how I ended up with the onesim because I didn’t have time to search for one. The only catch is your phone must be unlocked to use another sim card, so you must own it outright and ask your carrier to unlock it. So that means when I buy phones I have to pay like $800 upfront because if I had it on a loan they would not unlock it. I need to have data and can’t just depend on wifi, because I make calls and texts to European numbers while there (lots of friends and family live there) and I use it for online searching, online booking, tickets, maps etc.
Yes, Whatsapp calls/texts only other people added to the app. When you download the app, it does offer an option to import your entire contacts list. I did not do that. You do not need a phone to have Whatsapp, you can also have it on a Kindle, iPad, or other tablet devices. I just checked and there is a version for laptop as well - at least a Windows version.
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