Sockets that barely hold, at half the voltage

The plug is the American type: two flat pins, often with no earth. Most sockets grip so poorly that the plug works its way out on its own, helped along by the weight of the cable. Then you meet one that jams and will not let go, and the trick there is to take hold of the plug and rock it side to side rather than pull on the flex.

The voltage matters more than the mechanics. The mains here is a hundred and ten volts at sixty hertz. At home it is two hundred and thirty at fifty.

What that means for equipment from Europe

• Phone and laptop chargers work. Almost all of them accept a hundred to two hundred and forty volts and both frequencies. You need a plug adapter, not a converter. It is printed in small type on the charger itself, and it is worth reading before you reach the airport.
• Anything that heats does not work. Kettle, hair dryer, travel iron. At half the voltage a heating element gives about a quarter of its power, so the kettle never boils, it just warms the water and whines. An adapter changes the shape of the pins, not the voltage.
• There is often no earth. A two pin socket has nowhere to take the earth pin of a European plug. On a laptop with a metal body you notice it as a faint tingle under your fingers. That is not a faulty charger, it is leakage current with nowhere to go.
• A converter is rarely worth it. It weighs more than the kettle and costs more than buying one here.

Three weeks in, the conclusion is simple: bring the chargers and an adapter, buy everything else locally.