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INA WO(A)NDERS: About travel apps

Before and during her travels, our author Ina uses numerous apps to make her life easier on the road. In her column, she questions what she gains from this - and what she might miss out on as a result.

"Just drive 10 kilometers further down the river to Briaire. It's much nicer there than here in Gien anyway!" A friendly French couple gave me this valuable tip during my summer road trip from Portugal to Germany. The reason we even started talking? The Park4night server was down.

Nice discovery

Useful travel apps

As much as I like to portray myself as a wild, minimalist vagabond who dreamily shares her thoughts on mindful and conscious travel in her travel column, I still spend far too much of my time with my smartphone. Because I use it to communicate from afar not only with editors and interview partners, family and friends. It also has a ton of apps that make my life easier on land and at sea. And that goes way beyond Google Maps.

Omio, Rome2Rio, Trainline and the apps from Flixbus and Deutsche Bahn help me to get to my destinations using public transport. Alternatively, I use Swoodoo and Skyskanner to find the best travel routes through the skies. When sailing, I use Windy for wind, weather and wave forecasts, Tide Times to determine high and low tides, Navily and Noforeignland to find out about anchorages and ports, an anchor alarm app to avoid drifting, Navionics for navigation and Marine Traffic when I'm just curious about who is sailing where.

On land, Leo and Google Translate help me communicate in foreign languages. AllTrails, Outdooractive and Wikiloc show me the best hikes and bike tours in my area. And when I travel in a van like this summer, Park4Night helps me find a parking space every day. Unless, as already mentioned, the server is down.

Valuable tips from locals

It's moments like this one in Gien on the Loire that make me realize how dependent I am on my smartphone. And what I might be missing out on because I plan my trips almost entirely digitally. Because Park4Night wasn't working, I switched to Google Maps. The app had led me to an alleged campsite, but it was cordoned off. There was no quiet parking space in sight, I was hungry and only had an hour left until my next interview. So I had no choice but to ask around. The Briaire tip from the nice French couple turned out to be a hit. I was delighted by the small town with its canals and alleys, found a great parking spot right on the river and in the evening watched the boats crossing the Loire over a canal bridge with a glass of rosé. What a find, and completely analogue! Since then, I've continued to use my apps, but I much prefer asking the people in my immediate area for their best travel tips. And this often leads to good conversations that stay in my memory – and that cannot simply be scrolled away.

How do you organize yourself when you travel? Which apps do you absolutely not want to do without when you are on the road? And has it ever happened that a travel app has let you down? I am always happy to receive feedback, suggestions or questions - please leave a comment or send an email to [email protected].

On a Journey of Discovery
glass of rose

© Photos: Pexels / Pavel Danilyuk, Ina Hiester

Ina is a digital nomad and travels through Europe by land and sea. The journalist is always on the lookout for special places for Good Travel, philosophizes about travel in her column, takes photographs, makes music and writes articles on all kinds of environmental and sustainability topics.

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