Thirty lessons is a lot to carry through security. Here's the whole course distilled into one list, in the order you'll actually use it - before you leave, at the airport, the moment you land, and what to do once you're home. Bookmark this one specifically; it's the only lesson meant to be reopened on every trip, not just read once.
Before you leave the house
- Confirm your phone is unlocked - check with your carrier if you've never checked before (unlocked vs carrier-locked phones).
- Run your exact model through the compatibility checker if you haven't already.
- Buy and install your eSIM at least a day before departure - the download needs a connection, and an airport is the wrong place to discover otherwise.
- Check the plan covers every country on the route, not just the first one, especially on multi-border trips.
- Download offline maps for each stop as a backup, regardless of how good your plan is.
None of this replaces judgement - a two-hour weekend hop needs less of this list than a six-country rail trip does. But run down it once, properly, and every trip after gets faster, because most of the checking becomes muscle memory rather than research.
Not sure where you're headed yet, here's what a plan actually looks like for one destination on the list: