Taking Care of Business

After 34 days without a mobile phone, we were finally able to secure cell phone service through T-Mobile in Austria.  It is amazing how difficult it was to secure phone service. It was not as difficult in Poland because an organization within the Embassy secured the phones and accounts for us and paid our bill.  We just had to pay them back.  No such organization exists here.

In order to obtain phone service, we had 1) obtain legitimization cards, 2) obtain a letter from the Embassy confirming our address in Austria, and 3) open a bank account. The easiest part of this process was the proof of address letter.  Everything else took a month's time.

The legitimization cards are cards given to each member of the family basically confirming that you are a member or family member of someone in the diplomatic corp or international organization.  The cards are in German have a picture of the card bearer.  It is like a residency permit.  We each have one now.

Opening the bank account was not as time consuming.  Lucky for us, a branch of Bank Austria is located within the Embassy.  Everything here is done by bank transfer. There is no check writing in Europe. Whenever you receive a bill, the bank account number, routing number and other numbers associated with the biller are included on the bill.  You then can either pay online or go to the bank and fill out a slip transferring fund to the biller.  I do prefer this to check writing because checks sometimes take time to clear where with the bank transfer, once you submit the slip, the money is deducted from your account immediately. 

With those three items along with our passports, we were able to walk into T-mobile and walk out with a new phone and two micro sim cards for our iPhones purchased in the USA. Now we just need to go back to T-Mobile to get them to change the voice mail language to English but that is a minor glitch.

On a more surprising note, I learned a few things this week regarding our Vonage phone service and iMessage. 

We have had Vonage VOIP service since 2006 when we moved to Warsaw.  It was very convenient to have a US phone number that we or anyone could call free of charge with the exception of our monthly fixed bill.  Yesterday, I was in the app store and searched for Vonage.  There was an app that is like Skype.  So I downloaded it.  It asked me to enter my mobile phone number.  Instead of entering my mobile phone number, I took a chance and entered our Vonage home phone number.  It asked to confirm the number by text message but also gave the option to request a call.  So I opted for that and entered the code given to me by phone.  I then called my mother's cell phone in the USA free of charge. This means that I can call anyone now when I'm out and about from my cell phone as if I was in the US with a US number. 

In regards to iMessage, I was alerted to the fact that if you use iMessage selecting someone's email address rather than their phone, you can send and receive text messages for free.  So for those of you who know my email (check Facebook for that information) and have an iPhone, you can text me as if I never left the USA.

Things continue to look up....can't wait to move to our new and permanent place next week!