WLAN
Here in New York, unlike in the German cities I’ve visited so far, there really is free Wi-Fi everywhere.
Starting with LinkNYC, a city-funded Wi-Fi service that can be found at every phone tower in New York. These pillars also offer the possibility to charge your cell phone.
In addition, really every public building also offers WLAN.
- The airport
- The Rockefeller
- All Metro Stations
- Very many hotels
- Parking lots
- All restaurants
- The ferries
This was really a welcome service for us as travelers, since we were all too cheap and the offers of the major providers are very restrictive in terms of runtime and cell phone, to buy a SIM card for the US.
For this reason, we have not had any need for a domestic SIM at all and will not look into it until after our arrival at the college at the earliest.
To our surprise, all the networks listed did not require any login data, nor were they limited in any way in terms of time or speed. You could say that as a pedestrian in New York, you always have a better connection than the average home Internet connection owner in Germany.
So we can hope that the Freifunk movement in Germany will soon become incredibly popular, or we’ll have to consider emigrating.
Update 2023: I still haven’t found a good SIM card. If anyone knows a good prepaid SIM for returning European travelers, please send me a message!
Amtrak
For the last 380 km to the college, we decided to take the Amtrak train. Of course, there was free Wi-Fi on the train, and the legroom you enjoy on these trains was phenomenal. At first, we thought we were in business class, but the conductors didn’t kick us out, so we assume that’s how travel on these trains must be. Of course, “The Pennsylvanian” connection is probably outstanding in the US, since we haven’t heard as much good about the train network otherwise.
You’d think that with such good seats, which are reserved for business customers only on Deutsche Bahn, you’d have to pay a horrendous price, but we only paid $56 (€46) per person, for ~345 km “as the crow flies”! So the next time I want to get upset that Deutsche Bahn is too late, too uncomfortable, or doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi, it’s more than justified based on my experience today.
