Heading for the Alps for spring ski touring? Getting your EU travel gear together makes for stress-free fun.
Euro “German” outlet with North American adapter. In our experience, many of these adapters are too wide. Some can be modified, but I’ve worked with a few that were so wide I couldn’t fix them. I bought the test outlet off Amazon, it is now shown to be unavailable. Oddly, in the entire billion-product ecosphere of Amazon, I can not find one other available “German” outlet we can link to. Suggestions appreciated, as frequent travelers might want a test unit of their own.
It’s been our experience that quite a few of the 110/220 plug adapters available are too wide to fit the standard Western European round outlet. When you’re stressed out and trying to make time through the old country, you don’t want this fail. The concierge in your hotel might be clean out of adapters, due to demand caused by this bad gear. Test at home! As a tester I bought a cheap outlet on Amazon, and discovered most of our adapters needed plastic filed off the sides, otherwise they had to be jammed into the outlet so aggressively I was concerned something would shatter. I had to yank them out with pliers. You don’t want to be doing that at Gate B42, Frankfurt International, as you won’t have pliers! Ye have been warned.
If your adapter measures 33 mm or slightly more it will fit.
We bought a passel of these for our next trip, none fit without modification. You can see the blemish caused by removing a small amount of material. These adapters held up to the grind, others I’ve worked with were too wide to modify, as doing so ate into the internals.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
