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My experience of traveling through Great Britain and Germany with my iPad

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I wanted to share my experiences regarding traveling through Great Britain and Germany with my iPad.

It should be noted that my son brought his netbook with iTunes on it so it was simple to get the carrier file for microsims. I think if you are travelling without an additional system for the update, a quick visit to an apple store would take care of it.

First stop: Scotland/England

The day after I got to Scotland we found a 3 store. I walked in found a iPad specific sim hanging on the wall, took one and brought it to a rep who took my ten pounds and activated the sim. All in all, it took about five minutes. It popped it in when we got back to the hotel and connected the iPad to my son’s netbook, iTunes popped up, I told it not to sync and then it offered to update the carrier file. I clicked okay and a few minutes later I had 3G up and running with 250 megs of pre-paid data. In my last few days in London I did another 10 pound top-up as we found ourselves relying on the mapping functionality a lot.

Coverage-wise, 3 was quite good. The only places I had problems was when we were on a four-day hike along Hadrian’s Wall where I found the signal coming and going.

All in all it was a great experience and I give it an A.

Second stop: Germany

Germany was a completely different thing.

Both Vodaphone and O2 shops do not have sims in stock. You need to pre-order the sims and have them mailed to a German address. On top of that, one of them (I can’t remember which) wanted 25 euro just for the sim. The reps in the store were always unhelpful, many did not even know that iPad sims were available form their respective companies and several mentioned that because “no one wanted an iPad in Germany” they didn’t see the point in carrying the sims. So, no 3G in Germany for me.

On top of that, WiFi was not all that common. Even places that advertised free wifi often told us it was currently broken.

So, iPad travel experience in Germany: D-

Schwerin

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We’ve been in Schwerin for a few days now, and the Internet is dodgy so posting is difficult. We’ve met Klaus’s family and a couple of Michael’s Camino friends rolled into town for a short visit. The weather has been grey – missing my Manitoba sunshine – and cool but we managed to see the castle, the market square and some gardens.

Schwerin und Wismar

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So we arrived in Schwerin and contacted Kelly & Klaus by email as we couldn’t figure out what part of their phone numbers we no longer needed. We waited a bit, figured we wouldn’t see them until after work so we set off to a nearby mall. We went the wrong way and ended up running into Kelly who had some time between classes!
We went for coffee, picked up some groceries, then to the Hotel Fritz where Klaus showed up.
We popped over to a car rental and Michael is once again behind the wheel of an Opel.
All of us went to Wismar and wandered through the streets to the harbour. We also toured the Dom of St Nikolas and went up into roof for a tour. Kieran decided the height was too much and scurried back to the yard.
Later we ended up at Jack the Ribber where we tried to eat several animals’ worth of ribs.

Ramping Up for Euro Tour 2010

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We are in the home stretch for our overseas trip. Most things are booked and I think the only outstanding concern is lodgings along Hadrian’s Wall. I’m sure we’ll figure out something with Keith’s input.

This weekend our house sitter moves in. this will give the sitter the chance to learn the house (read cat) routines and learn where everything is.

I also wanted to ensure the sitter had a good video collection on hand so I spent some time this week moving all out movies into iTunes with the help of Handbreak and MetaX. It was kind of fun and now our AppleTV displays them all. I was somewhat worried about leaving the movies in their old location (a hard drive attached to the hacked AppleTV) as sometime the connection is lost and I wouldn’t be there to fix it.

I’ve got our iPad ready to go for the trip as well. We have the camera connection kit and the international adapter set. So we should have connectivity in most places and the ability to post, e-mail, and upload some photos.

As for the trip itself we fly into Edinburgh on the 7th. Keith will be picking us up at the airport. We get to stay with Keith and Alice (and their new grandson and granddogs!) just south of Edinburgh for about four days. We hope to hit some local castles (which I think will really appeal to Aleksander) and Edinburgh. We hope to walk some of the country side as well and I may even try the walk up Ben Nevis. Then it is off to walk three days along Hadrian’s Wall. This is where I’m nervous about lodgings. We left it too late and now I had to leave it in Keith’s hands to book places as he will have a much better idea of the area than I do. We end off with a night in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a night before we fly out to London, where we will immediately take a train to Oxford.

We have four days in Oxford and I hope to walk the old section of the city (looking for inspector Morse/Lewis landmarks), have tea with a cousin of a friend’s landlady, and hopefully stop in the Wychwood Brewery. I also hope to go punting, hit a few riverside pubs and walk the wilds a bit.

Then we train to London for a few nights where we have little plans. We will play this more by ear. Sandy is looking forward to the Tate and the Imperial War Museum and I’m looking forward to perhaps seeing the British Library. There is also a map in the library that Sandy wants to see. We will, of course, do the 221BN Baker street visit because there is some sort of law about that. I think Kieran is hoping to get a sense of the London Vibe and to meet some friends with which he is pen pals. Hmm, is it really pen pals anymore? It seems even e-mail is too much of a chore of the teens and IM is what it is about. IM Pals? Bleh.

From London we take a train through the Chunnel to Hamburg and then a local train to Schwerin where we will settle in for a visit with Kelly and Klaus and explore for seven days. I’m sure that it’ll be nice to slow things down after the whirlwind travel of the two previous weeks. Finally we will train to Berlin and spend three days exploring what we missed on our last visit. I may even meet up with Danny and Birgit! I haven’t seen them since walking the Camino in Spain and seeing them would be great!

Counting the days to our departure…