Traveling with Tech

Tech can make travel easier, but also adds to the complexity of it all. We recently returned from a trip to Germany, so I thought I'd share how we handled all the tech for it. Like adding Euros at a great exchange rate from my cell phone while in line at a gas station in time to pay for gas and snacks. That's what tech is good for!

Flights

I use Google Flights to scope out the best days to fly. I usually have an airline preference, too, so I am not really going for the cheapest flight per se, but close. Once I know which days are best, I book directly from the airline. For our Germany trip it turned out that flights were drastically cheaper right after compared to right before Christmas. A week or more before Christmas would've been better, too, but not possible due to school schedules. I could easily explore all potential scenarios with Google Flights.

Booking from the airline gives me everything I need in their app, from boarding passes to travel prep by uploading passport photos. Since United partners with Lufthansa, I had to reserve seats (and pay for them) on the Lufthansa site, which is a bummer, but I prefer to know our seat assignments ahead of check-in. The United app is actually really nice. It has a Travel section that shows all pertinent gates, connection time and directions with optional map. Made it pretty easy, but I'm already comfortable in airports.

Trains

The Deutsche Bahn motto should be "Prepare for Disappointment". After leaving off a whole carriage last time, this time our train was so delayed that we would've missed the connection. The friendly DB employee encouraged us to take any other train, so we did: got on an earlier train, had to stand for the first leg, but then we all had seats for the rest and it wasn't too bad. Talking to another DB employee to check if we could get reimbursed for the delay, we were told that what we did wasn't actually allowed and we were lucky we didn't get checked (she said all that in good humor). So we're not complaining. But prepare to be flexible.

Driving & Walking

We have family in Germany and relied on them to ferry us around. I also got an International Drivers Permit from AAA (same day service! Didn't expect that), which allowed me to drive and help out with the logistics of going everywhere with at least two cars. It was not as chaotic as I had thought or remembered. My navigation app of choice is Waze, which worked just fine in Germany and got me all the places I needed. Drivers were courteous and not everyone was pretending to be in a race, so going below the speed limit and taking your time was an option for us.

From where we stayed we had easy walking access to a small grocery store and bakery, and the almost-daily walk into the village made for a lovely ritual. CalTopo came in handy once when we were trying to find a trailhead to a little lake and got turned around, but otherwise we didn't need it. There really isn't any "wild" backcountry in Germany where CalTopo would shine.

Money

We always used our no-foreign-transaction-fee credit cards before, which is okay, but the exchange rates aren't the best. This time I found Wise.com and am very impressed! They are very transparent with the fees, which are reasonable, and we got the official exchange rate at the time of transaction. We also got the virtual debit card (I may have ordered a physical card had I had more time, but it wasn't an issue) and added it to Apple Pay on all our phones for contactless payments. Those were accepted in a lot more places than I remember from our last trip, so that's good, though some places still insist on only taking cash. It was usually pretty clear on signs if that was the case.

Adding money was so fast that I could refill the card while in line to pay for gas, after realizing all the recent transactions had drained the balance.

Wise security is really good, with passkeys for logins and app notifications on every transaction, plus the occasional need to approve a transaction, I assume when it seemed larger or atypical. None of it was a hassle, very quick, and inspiring confidence.

I'll definitely keep using Wise for future travel.

Phones

I bought data-only eSIMs at airalo.com (paying in Euros with the Wise card) for all our phones. Almost cheaper than my actual phone plan, it was €21 for 20G data valid for 30 days. A bit overkill, but nice peace of mind that we'd all have enough data to communicate and find each other if necessary. We activated the eSIM when we arrived and everything just worked.

Power

I brought a couple of plug adapters for our USB chargers, so that was easy. I also have a couple of USB hubs, both A and C, that take a two-connector power cable, of which I bought two in Germany to ensure they fit. That gave us a dozen of mixed USB plugs to charge devices and everyone just had to bring cables. Even our camera battery chargers use USB-C, so we were totally covered.

Comms

Find My helped when we went our separate ways and I could see everyone's locations. For messaging, iMessage would probably have worked, but with everyone using WhatsApp in Germany anyway, making a group felt natural, plus everyone could reach everyone else easily.

Recon

Google Maps for quickly checking operating hours of stores and restaurants (though they weren't always accurate for smaller businesses, so check websites when possible or even call ahead). It was also helpful for mapping out shorter walks or finding places to eat.

Lessons Learned

Not having our own car ended up being quite the inconvenience on one occasion, so for future trips we'll more seriously consider a rental car (which will be big and expensive for our very-not-German-sized family). Otherwise I have no regrets and will continue to do things this way on future trips.