(About 2,000 words)

Expect the Unexpected When Traveling Abroad
By Lynn L. Kauer, Editor
Saginaw Valley Computer Association
llkauer@chartermi.net

My wife and I recently went on a river cruise from Vienna, Austria starting with the Danube River. As we continued our trip on the Danube through Germany, we connected with the Main River that allowed us to travel over the mountains and connect with the Rhine River. The trip ended in Amsterdam in the Netherlands (Holland). This trip was for a period of three weeks and was on a boat that only held 150 persons, including the crew. We are more accustomed to the ‘big’ ships with upwards of 2,400 passengers plus crew containing all the amenities like an onboard shop to download the photos from the digital memory cards onto CD’s. I knew that this service would not be available on the riverboat and became a bit concerned with respect to what I would do if I ‘filled’ all of my digital storage.

My camera is a Sony DSC-F717 and uses “Memory Sticks” for digital storage. (Other cameras may use Secure Digital, Compact Flash Cards or XD cards depending on the manufacturer.) 

Although the camera is capable of taking photos at five mega pixels (2,560 x 1,020 JPEG image size), I adjust the settings downward to (2,048 x 1,536 JPEG image size). I also adjust the setting to ‘fine’ mode instead of ‘standard’ mode. This allows me to save approximately 80 photos on a 128MB stick instead of only 50 if I were to shoot at the five-mega pixel setting.

I own ten 128MB plus three 256MB memory sticks. Doing the simple math, they are capable of storing 1,280 photos. While it may seem like a lot, it really is not. I used almost all of their storage capacity on our last two-week trip to the Mediterranean while visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey and Croatia. 

On that trip, we sailed miles off the coast and there was no opportunity to take photos until we landed ashore. On the river cruise we would be traveling through the scenic vistas of three countries plus having stops along the way. I was concerned with having enough storage because we would be traveling for three weeks.

After the first day I quickly learned that there are a lot more things that one should worry about than digital storage. Some of the things contained in this article will surprise you and hopefully give you some insight as to what you should think about when traveling abroad whether on ship, train, bus or car.

RESOLUTION
As stated above, I lower the resolution to approximately three mega pixels on my camera. One of the passengers had a camera like mine. As we chatted, he told me that he had recently purchased the camera for the trip and was finding it easy to use. He previously owned a 35-mm film camera. We somehow got on to the subject of storage and I asked him how many ‘sticks’ he had. His reply, “Just the one that came with the camera. I can get all of the photos on the stick that I expect to take while traveling. I can get almost 800 photos on the stick.”

This is when I learned that the salesperson had changed the resolution on his camera to the lowest possible setting. In other words—Internet resolution. When I asked him if he intended to make prints he replied, “Oh yes. But none larger than 8 x 10.” He was the type who knew everything about everything so I found a way to let him snap away and disappeared into the crowd.

I also bumped into another poor fellow who really had a problem. He bought his camera real cheap in a pawn shop a week before the trip. The camera stored everything on a permanent chip inside the camera. The salesperson had told him that all he had to do was to go into any photo store and they would be able to transfer his photos to a CD with no problem. At this point, only three days into a sixteen-day cruise, his camera was full. Worse, he could not find a store that could provide the service for him.

Onboard the ‘big’ ships the service is readily available for a fee. On the riverboat, they had no provisions for this service. The crew attempted to help him by downloading the photos onto their computer but they too bumped into a brick wall. He never received the instructions or the CD that contained the necessary software with which to unload the photos to a computer. His photo shooting days ended early.

POWER
As stated earlier, I was concerned with having enough storage space for photos. (Incidentally, I shot almost 1000 photos.) The first option I thought about was to get an adaptor that would allow me to download the photos onto a laptop computer. However, this idea was short lived because carry-on luggage space is limited. International flights limit the passenger to one piece of carry-on luggage and the size is restricted. Secondly, carrying laptops through airport security is a royal pain. Therefore, I decided that I would become a ‘selective’ photographer and not try to capture every photo opportunity I saw.

When traveling in Europe one must keep in mind that 110-volt power is not available. All of the electrical power in Europe is 240-volt and not all of the plugs are the same from country to country. My first purchase was to buy a transformer to adjust the voltage for a 110-volt external battery charger. It’s about the size of a small flashlight, costs less than $25 and allows me to use it in any country. 

This is where I bumped into the first problem. I didn’t read all of the instructions that came with the transformer. The first occasion I had to use it was while in the hotel in Vienna. That is where I learned that the voltage was 240-volt and 50-cycle. The instructions clearly stated to not allow it to be plugged into the outlet for more than an hour or it would become overheat and possibly damaged. Therefore, I plugged the transformer into the outlet and let the battery recharge for shorter periods.
When we boarded the ship the only outlet available was in the bathroom. There were two outlets available. One noted for use with an electric razor only—110-volt. The other outlet was for 240-volt appliances. I used the 240-volt outlet with the transformer for one hour time periods to recharge the camera batteries without a problem. 

Alas, two of our shipmates were not so lucky. One plugged his charger into the 110-volt outlet and failed to pay attention to the time. Two hours later, when he entered the cabin, he found his charger smoking. The problem is the 50-cycle current. It burned it up. The other shipmate was less fortunate. He plugged the cord into his camera to recharge the battery. It also caused damage to the built-in charger and he now had a dysfunctional camera. I make it a practice to never use the camera to recharge the battery unless it is absolutely necessary.

INTERNET CAFÉ’S & KEYBOARDS
While in our hotel in Vienna I found a computer, that one could rent for Internet access. The rental rate for Internet access was three euros for fifteen minutes. This means $4.95 per quarter hour or about twenty bucks an hour. 

Because of the committees Crystal and I are involved in, we wanted to know what the latest information was. This is when we learned that attachments do not get transmitted overseas. This was very frustrating because we attempted twice later in different cities with the same result.

The interesting thing I learned on the first attempt was when I tried to send an e-mail to the sender that had the attachment. When I typed the message a lot of the letters were mixed up. For example, the S key would be displayed as a “&”, the “P” key would display as an “X” and the “R” key would come up as a “>”. The keyboard layout doesn’t match that of ours!

When I got it cleaned up and attempted to send it I received an error message that I had been logged off meaning that I had spent five bucks for nothing. This wasn’t unique to the hotel’s computer. It was common at other sites as well. The result was that we were out of contact with anyone online for a month because things just don’t interface as we expect them to.

I had bumped into the keyboard layout problem a couple of years earlier in England but it wasn’t as complex as being in Germany. Imagine what it would be like in China or some other remote country. The connection speeds were a step back in time. While some sites boasted cable and broadband access, the speed was similar to 56KB modems. I should have realized what the speed differences were as almost every home had an antenna on the roof!

HOW DO YOU SPELL RELIEF?
What does one do when they get sick in a foreign country? You call your doctor, right? Nope! Our shipmate had quadruple bypass surgery a couple of years earlier. About half way through the trip, he got a sore throat and a severe cold. He failed to bring medication along to take care of this condition. This became a big problem for him.
Since the time differential was six hours, and he got sick on a weekend, he was unable to contact his doctor in the states. He sent a fax to his doctor’s office to learn that the office staff turns off the machines when they leave work. Thus, for us it was noon and his doctor’s office was already closed because it was 6:00pm.

While ashore he tried to make a phone call but his doctor’s answering machine told him to call another number in the event of an emergency. The other number had a message to the effect, “the doctor is not in right now. Please leave a phone number where he can contact you.” Since we were ‘at sea so to speak’ there was no way for the doctor to call back.

After two days, the ship managed to contact his doctor who faxed a prescription to the ship via a satellite link while tied up in port. However, when he took it to the pharmacy, the pharmacist refuse to fill it because it was written in English and not from a doctor recognized as being in Germany. So, what’s the point? When traveling abroad try to anticipate the unexpected for medications that may require a prescription.
In my case, I became ill during the second week having caught the ‘cold’ of the fellow trying to contact his doctor. My only alternative was to talk to a pharmacist for some ‘over the counter’ medication. It didn’t work very well.

When I arrived home and found myself unable to sleep in a bed. The first night was spent dozing on the recliner. The next morning I met with my doctor and took the medication I had purchased with me. 

He pulled out the instructions from the package and exclaimed, “Everything is written in German. Why don’t they write in a generic language in English so that we could understand what they are telling us?” I replied, “Doc, we were in Germany. How many ‘over the counter’ medications in our country are written in German.” He looked at me with a sly grin and realized the folly of what he had asked.

From now on, when we travel abroad we will take some of the ‘over the counter’ medications that we use from time to time with us. We found aspirin a bit difficult to find as it was ‘blended’ with other unpronounceable things. The rule to follow is the same as going to a cheap party—BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle). In this case, BYPM (Bring Your Own Medicine).

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.