We recently visited Europe (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary) for the first time and learned or were reminded of things we had heard that are good to know when visiting Europe from the United States. This post lists a few of those observations.
Passports and Visas
In general, it's advised to always have one's passport expiration date be at least six months after the last date of a planned visit to another country and this is true of visits to the Europe. The Schengen Visa Information site states on its "Americans Traveling to Europe - EU Visa Requirements for US Citizens and Residents" page that those visiting the Schengen area from the United States should have their United States passport that is "valid for at least three months beyond your intended date of departure from the Schengen area."
This same page points out that visas are not currently required for those visiting from the United States for 90 days or less: "Citizens of the United States with a valid U.S. Tourist passport (blue passport) can travel within the Schengen Area for a maximum of 90 days without having to apply or obtain a Schengen visa for short-term tourism or a business trip" (not for working locally or going to school locally). However, there is also now this note advising of a change to this policy: "Note: (Starting January 1, 2021, US citizens will have to apply for an ETIAS visa prior to their travel towards Europe, in order to be allowed to enter the territory.)" The "European Travel Information and Authorisation System" page describes the ETIAS visa as "a completely electronic system which allows and keeps track of visitors from countries who do not need a visa to enter the Schengen Zone."
The "Schengen Agreement" is also described, "a treaty that led most of the European countries towards abolishment of their national borders, to build a Europe without borders known as 'Schengen Area'." Not all nations that are part of the European Union are currently in the "Schengen area." The "Schengen Area - World's largest visa-free zone" page lists the "Schengen Countries." At time of this writing, there are 26 nations that are part of the "Schengen area": Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Public Restrooms
In the European nations we visited, public restrooms were most frequently marked as "WC" (for "water closet"). It is a common practice in central Europe to pay to use a public WC (restroom), but this can be surprising to those visiting from the United States. The amount charged to use the public facilities is small (typically 0.5 Euro to 1 Euro), but it means that you'll want to have Euro coins on hand while in many European cities. Some of the for-payment public facilities have machines (and/or personnel) that accept and make change, but others require exact change.
It's also not uncommon to have a person of the opposite gender accepting the money and cleaning the restroom. Sometimes it's more obvious how/who to pay than it is at other times. Finding the closest public restroom can be a challenge at times as well. Most tour guides will tell participants where the WC facilities are.
Most restaurants and tourist attractions (museums, palaces, etc.) offer complimentary restroom use for their patrons, but these facilities tend to be small in the older buildings and there can be lines for them as many people wait until visiting these restrooms and attractions to use the restroom.
See "European Toilet Tricks to Know Before You Go" for more details regarding public facilities in Europe.
Dining
One of the enjoyable aspects of travel is dining out in new restaurants and trying new things. We learned quickly that the wait staff in most restaurants in central Europe do not bring the dinner check until requested. This is nice because there is no feeling of being rushed, but it can also mean waiting a very long time if one doesn't realize the need to express a desire to have the check brought.
The waiter or waitress will often ask if paying by cash or check before bringing the check because that determines whether they bring just the check (for cash) or bring the check and a device for reading the credit card. Many of the restaurants, especially the smaller ones in smaller and less tourist visited towns, clearly favored cash and, in some cases, only accepted cash.
In the United States, we're used to automatic tips generally only being applied if the group at the same table is six or more people. In Europe, however, we found it common to have a "service charge" automatically added to the check even for just the two of us. This service charge was typically 12%, so we'd often add a small tip on top of that because the service was typically excellent (what we'd pay 20% tip for in the United States). It is a good idea to determine if the service charge has been added to the check before calculating the appropriate extra tip, if any.
Most menus we encountered were relatively easy to order from. Most had at least some English in them and many had photographs. It was fairly common for menus to have the name of an item in English with the description in the local language or to have just the opposite (title of item in local language with English description).
The Budapest Guide's "'Check, Please!' and Other Tipping Tips" is a good resource with additional details regarding dining out in central Europe.
Money and Payments
Many of the restaurants and attractions in the European cities accept major credit cards. Before departing for Europe, we identified a few of our credit cards that do not charge a foreign transaction fee. We ensured that the companies issuing those cards were aware of our travel plans so there would be no surprises when we charged payments to those cards in Europe. We also made sure we knew the PIN for each card, though we found that most European vendors were able to take our chip-based credit cards with signature instead of PIN.
Not all stores and restaurants we encountered accepted credit cards and it was also obvious that many that did accept credit cards greatly preferred cash payment. In smaller Vilshofen (Germany), for example, none of the three restaurants we were interested in accepted credit cards. It also became clear that many of the retailers did not want to make small sales that were being paid with credit card. They'd say their credit card system was down or that they had to accept cash only because they had already opened the cash register when small purchases were being made.
Most of the European countries we visited have the Euro as their command and standard currency. However, the Forint ("Ft" or "HUF") is still Hungary's currency. Although many Hungarian establishments would accept Euros as well (300 Forint to 1 Euro being the generally accepted conversion), it was easier to simply use Forint or credit cards in Budapest.
For easier and relatively cheaper access to local currency, we used a Fidelity Cash Management account and withdrew funds from ATMs throughout Europe. The Fidelity Cash Management account reimburses many ATM fees and has a small foreign transaction fee (1%) that is much cheaper than paying most conversion fees.
When possible, it's best to arrange for and pay for transportation with credit cards instead of cash. It's all too easy and too common for the taxi driver or ticket agent to return less cash than should be returned when purchasing tickets or paying a fare with cash. Credit cards are more likely to be charged the exact amount and also enable use of machines to purchase train and other public transportation.
When using credit cards in other countries, it's important to have vendors charge the credit card in the local currency (such as Euro or Forint in our case) instead of U.S. dollars to avoid potential "dynamic currency conversion" fees. See "Can I Use My Discover Card Abroad?" for additional details.
Photographs as Souvenirs
I have found that the best souvenirs for remembering the places we have visited are consistently photographs. We regularly did a couple of things in our day trips to cities in Europe that made for better memories and photographs.
- Used high vantage points to see incredible views of the cities and their surroundings and to capture memorable photographs.
- These were sometimes towers that could only be accessed via stairs due to the age of the towers.
- These were sometimes other attractions such as forts and palaces that happened to have great views.
- Purchased small books in each city featuring photographs and descriptive text.
- Photographs of more popular attractions often appear in these books without the crowds of people and with good weather and good lighting.
- Small books were convenient for carrying around the city we were visiting and identifying things to see and how to get to them.
- Books were available at many shops in each city and typically cost 10 Euro or less.
- After the trips, we like to have a professional photobook printed with our favorite photographs and with small and simple text that will remind us of the names of places and things we saw.
General Preparation
Here are some things we did to prepare for our first trip to Europe that turned out to be very helpful.
- Purchased electricity adapters for our devices.
- Identified credit cards with no foreign transaction fees.
- Registered dates and countries being traveled to with credit card issuers.
- Found or reset PIN for each card.
- Downloaded WhatsApp to mobile telephones and had family members do the same.
- Allows for "fast, simple, secure messaging and calling for free*, available on phones all over the world."
- Downloaded "offline maps" to Google Maps of areas we planned to visit such as Vienna. Budapest, and Salzburg.
- Did not need to use roaming data to download the maps by pre-loading them this way.
- Downloaded languages commonly spoken in areas we'd be visiting to Google Translate app.
- Did not need to use roaming data to download the languages or to look up translations by pre-loading languages this way.
Conclusion
I was surprised at how much English was spoken and understood in the countries we visited. There was also frequent occurrences of English on signs, menus, and other things we read. I liken it to how Spanish is so prevalent here in the western United States, but I think English may be even more prevalent as a second language in those countries than Spanish is as a second language in the western United States.
