During the next week I’m gonna go on the biggest journey I’ve ever been on. I’m gonna board an airplane for the first time in 5 years. I’m gonna see the other side of the world (Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Japan) and I’m excited beyond measure!
I am writing this post because I wanted to let you know that there will almost certainly be no new content here or anywhere else until my return. With maybe one exception. Every now and then I post pictures on my Instagram account. I’m gonna test if I can automatically crosspost to my Mastodon account.
As a digital person, I like travelling with apps that make travelling more enjoyable.
The first thing I did was download all the maps I’m gonna need for offline use on my phone. This way I can always find my way back, even if there is no cell connection. This works with Google Maps as well as Apple Maps. Apple Maps is a completely useless when it comes to offline maps. You can download them, but as of iOS 17.3.1 you cannot, I repeat, you cannot search the downloaded maps while being offline, which makes the whole feature pointless for travelling.
I heard lot’s of nice things about Flighty, an app which helps you to track flights and get delay information etc. right when you need it.
When travelling to New Zealand and Australia, CamperMate appears to be a nice option to find camp sites, nice places to visit and various other places of interest like supermarkets, charging stations or even WiFi access points.
Speaking of WiFi: On my last trip I discovered that there are lots of free WiFi finder apps out there, which comes in handy if you have only very expensive or limited data on your phone. I tested a lot of them and I found the best were WiFi Map and InstaBridge. They both have different data sets and your mileage may vary depending on which country you travel. Instabridge somehow tries to make you buy a SIM card instead of showing you the WiFi map. It is hidden behind Menu -> WiFi -> Map.
If you travel by car or camper van, you might want to find cheap gas. Gas price apps are popular in Germany, but not so in every other country. In Germany Mehr tanken works well. 1-2-3 Tanken works also in France. Benzinpreis Blitz also works in Spain, Portugal and Italy, but the only one I found to be working in New Zealand is Gaspy. But beware. Sometimes these apps show you gas stations in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes not.
Did I miss any good travel app you’d recommend using? Let me know!
My podcast app Pocket Casts is full of new episodes of podcasts I like. For example 4 episodes of the “infinite” German podcast called “Alles gesagt?” where two journalists of the German newspaper “Die Zeit” interview their guests as long until the guest ends the podcast by saying a word they agreed on at the start of every episode. These episodes can be as long as over 6 hours, but they’re insightful and fun.
One of my favourite mobile games of all time is Blackbox. I can’t say too much about how it’s played without giving too much away, but it is not played like normal games.
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