Phone

We are now cell phone owners.

After doing a bunch of reading on the English language website for the company (Telefonica O2) that bought out the national phone company, I went with our friend Jan (by the way, this is a man, pronounced like "yawn") to buy phone and internet service. We took a number and waited.

When our turn came, we talked about internet access. The fellow did not speak English so Jan translated. From my reading, I understood that they had 8 Mb/s WiFi that a person could get for 750 Kč ($42) per month or 650 Kč ($37.68) if they also bought a phone plan. Since it did not state it was DSL or mention requiring a landline (which are not in everyone's house), I believed it was essentially buying access to a great city-wide WiFi network.

When I got there, they told me I was wrong. It is DSL and we have no landline. So, our option with them is to buy their mobile internet access at 750 Kč ($42) per month plus 1890 Kč ($109.57) for the receiver. This would get us a 3 Mb/s connection with a 10GB/month maximum data transfer. Or we can keep connecting to wireless networks where the opportunity presents itself. We're sticking with the latter option for the moment.

Then phone. We were going to buy a plan, but being foreigners without a permanent address (I wonder if they consider our neighbors' addresses permanent), we could only buy a prepaid SIM card. Now you all know all about cell phones, so I won't bore you with the details (as if I haven't already) - all of which were new to me. Suffice it to say that I bought a number, but no phone at that point.

The problem with the phones is that everything (except food, public transportation, entrance to cultural events, medical care, and walking) is much more expensive here than in the U.S. So, I walked away contemplating whether the buy the cheapest phone ($60), or something more expensive and plan to take it back with us, or find somebody's cast off, or buy a U.S. phone and ask somebody to mail it to us. We finally settled on buy the cheapest. We also decided to get a second number and use a friends extra phone so we can touch base when we need to.

So, I went back to the phone store alone. When my number came up I walked up the young woman who said something - in Czech. I used my favorite phrase "Ne mluvim české." (I don't speak Czech). I always want to follow it up with, "but we can do this," except I don't know the words. So, I told her in my limited Czech, "I want phone, " and pointed to the SIM card offer in their brochure. I told her I want !300 Kč! of credit on it. I asked if it is still "two times the crowns" meaning double credit (yesterday was the last day of the offer).

Then, I needed to ask for a phone, but I didn't know how to say cheapest. I should have asked Kristine before leaving. Fortunately, I knew the price, so I said, "I want telephone, Nokia, 995 crowns." The whole room waited in suspense as I struggled to say 995 (deviet stoh devact piet - which I am sure is not quite correct). She brought me the phone. I paid her the money. And everyone went home happy.

The next trick was using the phone with all the instructions in Czech. Suffice it to say, we got our first cell phone call last night.