ATM Charges

Tom, I'm not 100% certain, but I believe that link you provided is outdated and not accurate. From what I understand Citibank sold all of their German branches to a French bank in 2008, and all the locations were re-branded very recently. If you go to https://online.citibank.com and click "locations", Germany no longer appears in the list of countries they do business in.

LIke Devon, I recommend a credit union ATM card. Ours charges no use fee at all for using the ATM, and applies only a small (1%) transaction fee on the currency conversion. We've used it in Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the UK, including places where my husband's Citibank card failed.

Citibank has lot of branches in Spain; none that I'm aware of France, or Germany. I'm not aware of any partnerships:(

According to their website, Citibank has branches throughout Germany. http://www.citibank.com/locations/eu/de/de/de.htm

Personally I would take a card this is not dependent on a specific bank. I think it is a big hassle to have to find a particular branch and then what happens is that ATM is out of order? Debit and credit cards that don't charge fees are everywhere and you have the time.

Consider opening an account with a credit union. In my experience, I have received wonderful exchange rates and minimal (if any) ATM fees. (This is not the case for every single credit union, but it is usually similar. You may not receive as great of an interest rate, but it can be very worthwhile for international travel.)

@Michael - you are 100% correct, and I appreciate your correction. I don't remember what I googled to get to the outdated website. Makes you wonder why Citibank hasn't pulled the outdated site offline. From Wikipedia: "The German branch, the Citibank Privatkunden AG & Co. KGaA was sold in July 2008 to the French Crédit Mutuel Group. On February 22, 2010 it was renamed to Targobank."

Here I go again - you have plenty of time to open a Capital One money market account online and get an ATM card. No fees, mid-market exchange rates, and they work everywhere and are not linked to any specific banks. Because there are no fees, I never feel "obliged" to take maximum withdrawals, so I don't have to carry around more cash than I need. It is especially useful in Germany, where many shops (including large chains) and restaurants do not accept credit cards.

As another option, USAA has a flat 1 percent fee on ATM transactions with your debit card. For me it was worth switching from Wells Fargo ($5 plus 3 percent fee per ATM withdrawal). I thought USAA was reasonable and still offered the services I wanted - Wells Fargo wasn't reasonable. Because of the 2009 banking bill, everyone needs to watch their bank's fee structure carefully. There are a lot of changes happening now.

Yet another option is a Charles Schwab debit/Visa card. We recently used our new CS card extensively on our recent trip to Barcelona and France and not 1 cent was charged in fees. All ATM charges were credited back at the end of the month. Also, when used as a Visa card, you are only limited by the amount of money you have in your checking account and not by your withdrawl limit. We charged a couple of large hotel stays on our CS Visa and it worked very well. Note that when you use the Visa feature on your debit card, it deducts from your checking account. It doesn't go to your Visa account. Next, when using the Visa feature, there is no additional fees. We did sparingly use our Chase Visa card and received a 3% fee on the charges whenever we used it.