 How to call home, keeping in touch. e-mail, Internet access.
You might not think about it, but your parents actually get worried when you are overseas, they might see on the news that a high speed train crashed in Germany, and probably you might not realize of it because you are in France and your hostel does not have a T.V. So, it is always recommendable to call home once in a while.
There are several ways to contact your loved ones; snail mail doesn't count anymore when you can have e-mail and lots of internet cafes all over Europe.
To call home costs about US$0.30 to US$0.50 per minute from Europe to the U.S.A. when you use an International Phone card bought in the spot. You have to call and 800 number and then type a code that comes with the card. There are several brands of phone cards in every country and the rates change depending on the brand.
You can also buy a local phone card, but they burn so fast that you can hardly say "hello". The rates for an international call using a local card can be of the order of US$3.00 per minute, so avoid them if you can.
Another choice (Very common in Las Ramblas, Barcelona) is to use your own credit card to dial home, again you call to an 800 number, type your credit card number and then the phone you wish to call. However, I do not recommend this method because you do not know how serious is the company that is advertised in the phone cabin and therefore you do not know how much it is really going to cost, you don't get a receipt to proof anything anyway!
The cheapest choice is to use the Internet to call home; with services like Net2Phone or Yahoo! you get fares as low as $0.04 per minute. The only problem is to find an Internet Provider that has speakers and microphones installed on their computers.
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