Buying a Sim card at Frankfurt Airport?

Susan If you are staying at places with included WiFi - most except the high business class hotels do now include it - by far and away the easiest and cheapest way is to use Skype with the wifi and your skype enabled device. we use a netbook and its speakerphone capacity. Nothing simpler.

I agree with Nigel about lower costs with a wifi equipped phone or netbook. But if you don't have that you'll have to have an alternative. Buying a local SIM will give you halfway-decent rates for calls to the U.S., but cheaper rates are available using a calling card and a pay phone. Not sure about SIMs at the Frankfurt airport, but you can buy them at many, many locations. In my experience, you can buy a SIM in one European country and then roam on that account in other European countries. True, you will pay roaming rates, but those rates are still lower than what AT&T would charge you. There are travel phone companies that sell "universal" SIM cards, but their rates are usually between that of a local SIM and your home cell phone company. Will your mother or others in your family need to contact you? Getting a local SIM means that they'll have to make an international call to reach you. You could follow a hybrid approach: Keep your AT&T phone active, but don't use it except for emergencies. Then buy a calling card at a convenience store and use payphones for the bulk of your calling. If your relatives can use text messages to communicate, that is even better and you can set up calls that way.

Thanks for your input. I had forgot about texting. I think I'll take my phone and my husbands phone. Put my sim card in my husbands phone (he doesn't have texting). Leave his phone on for emergencies. In an emergency they could text me or call, and I could call them back. Buy a calling card for calling my Mom. Also going to check into the affordability of a sim card for my phone when I get to the airport. My mother is in Canada and sometimes it's not convenient to find a pay phone. But some of the places we are staying have phones in the room, so a calling card would do. Thanks for your info.