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Europe Unplugged
In a perfect world, you'd travel without electronics... but in this world, you have to charge the batteries on your digital camera, cell phone, laptop, handheld...
The only piece of electronic equipment I travel with that isn't battery-powered is my trusty Mac iBook—and I only need that because I have this strange job of writing about my travels.
Electronics of any kind are just a big hassle on the road. They take up excess room in your luggage, take time out of your schedule, and often put hotel fuses out of commission. This hassle is five times worse with anything that has a cord.
Like it says on the Ultimate Packing List, take a small battery-operated alarm clock, and one of those teensy flashlights for poking around ancient ruins and finding stuff in the dark. Beyond that, travel without electronics. A hair dryer, even the teensy portable kind, is just another monkey on your back.
Air dry, baby. Or, if you insist on fluffy locks, know that the majority of European hotels from the moderate range up have built-in hair dryers in the bathrooms. If you insist on lugging your own hot air over there, heed my plea and make sure that either it is dual-voltage or that you carry along a converter (more on that in a moment).
Hotels black out on a regular basis when an American plugs in his 110V hairdryer and the appliance either explodes in an impressive shower of sparks or melts in his hands. This stunt has long since ceased to amuse hoteliers and other guests.
For shaving, I'd stick with Bic unless you have a battery-operated electric shaver—that way you won't have to bother with voltage problems. If not, however, most hotels have a special plug for low-wattage shavers and shavers only. Such outlets are usually identified by an icon of a half-shaven face. If you plug anything other than a shaver in there, you'll join the unpopular hair dryer-melting, fuse-blowing crowd.
If you're planning to bring along any other electronic device, ask yourself whether you really need it (hint : the answer is "no").
OK, so I will make two exceptions. The first is a necessity in the digital age: most digital cameras don't take regular old batteries anymore, only the rechargeable kind. So go ahead, pack that charger (and bring a spare battery; you'll use the juice up quickly snappign pics all day).
Also, I often tote a personal tape deck, but not to listen to tunes—why shut your ears off from the audio portion of your vacation? I take one with a record button on it so I can capture the sounds and conversations of Europe, the flamenco guitar in a Seville bar, the roar of the crowd at a soccer match, and the occasional snippet of an audio journal.
Keeping Current
Are you still determined to lug around half a Radio Shack? Well, here's what you need to know. American current runs 110V, 60 cycles. Europe runs 210 to 220V and 50 cycles.
You can't plug an American appliance into a European outlet without frying your appliance and/or blowing a fuse. You need a currency converter or transformer to bring the voltage down and the cycles up.
However, most modern devices designed to travel have the converter built in: hairdryers, laptops, digital cameras/camcorders. One notable exception, for some evil reason, is the standard charger units that come with Palm handhelds—which is pretty stupid, as the whole point of a handheld is that it's eminently portable.
The greedy folks at Palm, Inc. want you to shell out even more dough for a special "travel charger" if you actually want to take your Palm on the road internationally and not blow out the fuse in your Irish B&B and at the same time fuse the curcuits inside the charger rendering it—and therefore, after the few hours charge left on it wears off, your Palm—useless, which sucks because you needed it to take notes on this trip in order to write an article about it for a travel magazine.
Yeah, I speak from experience on this one.
The practical lesson is this: figure that most travel-type electronics these days work on all voltages/currents, but don't assume it. Always check the bottom panel, the script embossed in the plastic of the charger plug, or the instruction manual to be sure.
Again, it's easiest really to just leave it all at home.
Square Pegs, Round Holes
Plug adapters make the two flat prongs of a US elctronic device fit the two round pin-holes (or three slanted flat plugs of England) in Europe.
Even if your device has a converter built in, you still can't plug an American appliance into a European wall because it just plumb won't fit. American plug prongs are flat and parallel; much of Europe uses two round holes or some other configuration (the Brits have large, funky plugs made from three huge, flattened fingers of metal arranged in a triangle and set at different angles).
You can get small plug adapters that make the switch, but these are not currency converters. You still need to go through a transformer to get the electrical current running properly.
Please Turn off All Electronic Devices as We Begin Our Descent into...
Airlines will request that you don't have your computer, personal tape deck, CD player, cell phone, or any other electronic device turned on during take-off and landing.
On the off chance that the waves emitted by these items might foul up the computerized guidance systems, they're hedging their bets against the laser in your CD-ROM drive causing the plane to crash.
On the off chance that they're right, I for one am wholly on their side.
Resources for traveling with electronics
Magellans — Major travel catalogue that, in addition to selling everything travel related (from the mind-bogglingly useful to the completely pointless), sports a bewildering array of electrical adaptors and other esoterica of the traveling techno-geek.
Franzus — All the thrilling details you can handle on foreign electricity and what it means to you and your appliances. Oh and, by the by, they also happen to sell currency converters and plug adapters.
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This article was last updated in June 2006. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2008 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
