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Useful links... |
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The GoMio team have had a look what's out there for the traveller, and found some websites that we thought would be helpful!
Helps you find the nearest internet café!
www.cybercaptive.com
list of international dialling codes!
www.countrycallingcodes.com
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GoEurope - Keeping in Touch |
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| One of the most important
things for many people is keeping in touch with their loved ones,
and there are a number of different ways to do this; |
| Phoning Home
First tip; Never, if you can at all avoid it, use pay phones with cash.
It will cost you an absolute fortune. This also goes for those phones
that will take your credit card. Your best bet is a pre-paid phone
card, and for this you have a couple of options. |
| If you are going to be in
a country for a while, there are always ‘local' international
phone cards available that can offer rates to the US or Australia
for as little as €0.02 a minute. The only problem with these
is that you can only use them in the country that you bought them,
and so it's a challenge to talk so much that you get all your moneys
worth! |
Otherwise there are a number
of ‘global' international calling cards that you can buy,
any search on Google will give you a list of hundreds of companies
offering very similar products. One good one that we found was
Calling Cards.com, ( www.callingcards.com)
that sells a variety of cards and can tell you which is the best
value in terms of where you will be calling from and where you
will be calling to the most. |
| To call internationally from any country the process is normally the international dialling code (most commonly 00), the country code, the area code (usually dropping the initial 0), and then the local number. So to call us lovely people at GoMio in Dublin from the UK you would dial 00 353 (for Ireland) 1 (for Dublin) and then 638 77 71 (the local number).
The following is a list of country codes for home, and Europe…
| USA(1) |
Canada(1) |
Australia(61) |
UK(44) |
| New Zealand(64) |
South Africa(27) |
Austria(43) |
Belgium(32) |
| Bosnia(387) |
Czech Rep(420) |
Denmark(45) |
Estonia(372) |
| Finland(358) |
France(33) |
Germany(49) |
Greece(30) |
| Hungary(36) |
Ireland(353) |
Italy(39) |
Latvia(371) |
| Lithuania(371) |
Netherlands(31) |
Norway(47) |
Poland(48) |
| Portugal(351) |
Serbia - Mon.(381) |
Spain(34) |
Sweden(46) |
| Switzerland(41) |
Turkey(91) |
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| (www.countrycallingcodes.com can give you a list of the codes from every country to another). |
Internet Access
Email is the cheapest way of keeping in contact with friends and loved
ones, arranging to meet people again that you met on the road, and
virtually every major town (and increasingly a lot of minor ones) in
Europe has internet cafes. The internet is also useful for a wide range
of backpacking things…but then you know that because you're reading
this! So you do not need to know much more, except some links to websites
that will help you find the cybercafé in the next destination
on your list, such as www.cybercaptive.com.
If you are in the UK, Spain, Greece, Germany, Italy or Ireland, look
out for the Easyeverything internet cafes which are often the cheapest
around. Check out www.easyeverything.com for
details of store locations.
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| Post It
For the old school soldiers out there, rest assured, even in
the digital age postal services still exist, and sometimes
a letter is more meaningful than any email ever could be,
and no backpacking trip would be complete without a stream
of postcards sent home to make people jealous, and give you
something to do on those long train rides. Depending on how
fast you want to get your letters and postcards home you
can send them by ‘land' or by ‘air', but either
way the cost of sending postcards is rarely prohibitive.
Receiving mail on the road can be done by the sender addressing
it to you at ‘Poste Restante', the name of the city,
and then a number 1 to indicate the main post office. You
can go and pick it up anytime within a month of it arriving,
but you sometimes have to pay a small fee for handling. |
What's Going on In the World?
For many backpackers the ‘break from reality’ that
travelling affords them is a welcome respite from what's going
on in the world, but for others it is just as important to keep
abrest of international affairs and what's going on back home.
An invaluable source of information (even if I am biased by my
nationality) is the BBC, online, on the radio through the World
Service, and on television through BBC World. Information for
all these can be found at www.bbc.co.uk.
Also, many newspapers have international editions, such as the
International Herald Tribune (produced by the New York Times)
and the Guardian Europe from the United Kingdom. News magazines
such as Time and the Economist are also available at kiosks across
the continent. Some newspapers produce superb online editions,
such as the Guardian at www.guardian.co.uk,
the New York Times at www.nytimes.com ,
and the Sydney Morning Herald at www.smh.com.au.
Many major European cities also produce local papers in English,
which is often the best way to find out what's going on in the
news in the place that you are visiting. Some examples are the
Prague Post, the Budapest Sun, the Athens News and the Copenhagen
Post. In a number of eastern European cities, In Your Pocket
offers a monthly guide in English with maps, listings and events.
A full list of editions can be found at www.inyourpocket.com.
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