Study Abroad in Granada,Spain during the Winter/Spring

Loire,

1. Yes, there are pharmacies there and you can get many OTC products,
   however, they may not be identical to the ones you get here in the
   U.S. [When my daughter studied abroad, she packed some Tylenol and Ibuprofen]

2. You can use a debit card and get cash from an ATM in Granada. Just make sure you contact your bank to notify them of your travel dates.

3. You can check historical weather on various websites such as, wunderground.com

BTW, when my mom and I traveled to Granada, we met a couple of young women who were studying abroad there, and they were happy with their choice.

Enjoy your study abroad experience!

Edited to add...

You can also get more information from other students, from your university, who have studied in Granada.

Hello and congrats, you will love Spain! Answers:

1. Yes we do have pharmacies! Lol But as mentioned above we may have different name for the same medications, for example Tylenol is called Paracetamol. You'll be surprised by how inexpensive medications are outside of the good ol' USA.

2. Have some Euros ready before you fly in just in case, then exchange for some more once in Spain.

3. Granada can actually be quite cold during winter. The mountains around Granada, the Sierra Nevada, have much snow in winter time. There are a number of ski resorts there, so make sure to do some skiing in the Sierra Nevada for a unique experience!

Hope this helps!

Adding to Priscilla’s and Carlos’ good info:

1. Farmacias, like drug stores throughout Europe, are marked with a green cross, often lit up, and it sometimes seems like there’s one every place you turn. A trained medical person is on staff, who can often provide a lot more professional advice than you might get at a place in the USA. Some brands and products are universal, but if you wind up needing something for a cold, the medicines might be the Spanish cure, and different than what you’d find at home. Ask the professional pharmacist for suggestions. Curiously, legal marijuana dispensaries here in Colorado have adopted the green cross symbol to mark their establishments, but they’re not the same shops!

2. Dealing in the local currency (€) is always the way to go. Exchanging dollars for euros in a bank will take you extra time, and you’ll likely get a worse exchange rate than when you just withdraw cash from an ATM using your debit card. In addition to notifying your bank about the dates you’ll be in Spain, so they don’t freeze your account, worried that a scammer is trying to use your ATM card in Europe, make sure you understand what foreign and out-of-network fees your bank will charge you each time you withdraw cash. If you qualify for a credit card, AAA auto club and others have a no-foreign transaction fee Visa or Mastercard. Than means not overspending, racking up lots of interest, and needing to pay your card monthly (set up an automatic payment from your checking account), but it might be worth exploring. Also, there’s a “dynamic currency conversion” concept, which some retailers, restaurants, and ATM’s might offer, where you get the supposed convenience of having your transaction quoted to you in your “home” currency, i.e. dollars. But there’s a fee for that, and you’re capable of calculating what something costs without a machine charging you for that service, so if offered the option of having a transaction quoted in its dollar equivalency, ignore it, and have it ring up strictly in Euros.

3. Carlos beat me to asking if you’re a skier. I was still typing my whole reply when he'd already hit send, so re-reading and retyping afterwards, I’ll just reiterate that while Granada’s not way up in the mountains itself, there’s world-class skiing relatively close by to the north, and you’ll be there at the right time.

4. Be sure to visit the Alhambra, one of the truly greatest tourist must-see sites in the world.

5. Splurge at least once on an Arab bath or Hammam, maybe even treat yourself to a massage there, too.

1. Yes, of course. Europeans have headaches and get cuts also.

2. When our son studied in Madrid for a semester we set up a special banking account with a debit card in his name and ours. We kept a low balance, <$500, just in case his debit card was compromised. We checked the account frequent and when it was approaching a $100 we would transfer funds back to $500 or so. That way he always had access to cash that was convenient and inexpensive to obtain. In addition he had two credit card that we could also monitor as needed. I think it is important that someone in the states is on all your accounts so they can intervene in the event of a problem. We learned that lesson the hard way when he was in high school and spent a summer in an exchange program in Germany with only a debit card in his name. Something triggered a freeze and it was nearly impossible to deal with the problem at the bank because only his name was on the card and the account. I was literally in the manager's office begging for assistance when he finally yielded with the statement, "Ok, I will help but you realize that I am breaking a number of federal banking regulations so don't say anything to anyone."

3. Take a min amount of clothes with you and buy what you need when you get there. You will want to buy and wear clothing including shoes that matches what the other local students wear. It is called, "Fitting in." When we visited our son at the semester break we took his better US clothing home and gave away the rest.

4. Buy a local phone. It is cheaper.

5. I assume you have the proper student study visa. It took us almost three months to get the visa. As a part of that process will need to have proper medical insurance in place.

Thanks,everyone!

Two popular US OTC meds that don't seem to be available in Europe:

Pepto-Bismol
High-zinc throat lozenges like Cold-eeze

Hopefully you’ll get a chance to ski in Europe’s southernmost ski area outside of Granada. My kids did that while studying abroad.