Staying in Touch in Europe

Our guide to keeping in touch with loved ones whilst in the European Union.

Phone

Contacting home whilst you are travelling needn’t be expensive. It’s important that family and friends know where you are and what your travel plans are, from a safety point of view. If you are going to be using public payphones buy a phonecard and find out about companies offering cheap international phonecalls. They will either offer you a card that you use, or a prefix to dial before you use the international dial code. In general avoid hotel phones as even in cheap hotels they over charge for phone calls.

If you are using a mobile phone from your home country you’ll need to contact your network provider and set up an overseas "roaming" facility on your phone. This costs nothing to set up, but be warned that charges will be steep. What you can do before you arrive in a country, is to call your network provider and find out which of the networks in the country you are going to offers the cheapest call rates. You can then set your phone to automatically use this network when you make calls in the country. You may be charged for receiving as well as making phonecalls. Text messaging may be cheaper, talk to your network provider about how much this will cost.

Alternatively, if you know that you will be working or staying in a country for a longer period of time, it may be more cost effective to buy a phone locally when you arrive.

Internet cafés

By far the cheapest way to keep in touch in Europe and around the world is by email. You will find that there are Internet cafes in all larger towns and cities, and sometimes in the most unexpected places! You normally pay for the amount of time that you want to use the PC.

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