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After Paris where are we going? It’s a question that interests us even more than it does you. If you just want the final answer, skip this background info. If you want to know the details, read on.

Let's do something new

In early 1998, as we were getting our house ready to sell a primary question was where would we go? We considered a lot of things, but one that was really exciting was to fly to France, get a really solid vehicle, and drive until we reached China and the Pacific ocean. While wild, it did seem feasible. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the opening of borders, and the new openness of China, it was a route that was sure to become popular. With some search, we found and read about people who had done it.

By May, 1998 we had put the idea aside, not because it wasn't a good idea, but because Gerry had a job and Jan soon would. We had, of course, sold the house, but Gerry had nearly simultaneously taken a job in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, working on an Army command and control system and we rented a house so close that he walked to work. Jan took a job later that summer documenting fiber optic networking equipment.

In March, 1999 Jan quit her job and Gerry quit his in May, but even before that we were again faced with the question "where?" We resurrected the old idea of driving to Beijing and considered it with many other things. But again it was not to be: we landed in Paris for the summer because the apartment we are now in was offered to us. (And it has turned out to be wonderful; we don't really feel ready to leave.)

Paris isn't forever

We've known all along that our lease would be up on August 27 and that we would need a new place. We wanted to stay at least two months wherever we went — no more stands of a few nights for us if we could help it. Because we wanted more comfort, room, privacy, and less expense than a hotel would involve, we were looking for apartments. Our basic idea was to find a situation similar to that in Paris: somebody who wanted to sublet or have a house sitter for a few months.

In our search we cast our net pretty wide. We read all the appropriate classifieds in "FUSAC", an English-language Parisian weekly for expats. (The name comes from France-USA Contacts. Find it when you are in Paris.) Through friends we sought possibilities in Beijing, Hong Kong, Israel, and Vienna. We found some ads for Switzerland and Berlin and looked into them. We found internet sites for Munich and Portugal. Without getting very far we considered Budapest and Dresden. Hop a plane to South Africa? Maybe. Kosovo was in the news — why not think about it too?

The Millenium is a Y2K problem

There was a little factor that we wanted to include, but it wasn't too clear how: Where was the ideal place to celebrate the arrival of the third millennium? As we really could choose anyplace in the world, what would we like? Rome is an obvious choice for many; we have heard that as many as twenty million people may try to be there. We don't want to fight such a crowd, and even if it weren't so crowded, it somehow doesn't appeal to either of us. Jan would like a very quiet, perhaps remote place. Gerry wants some place that has either or both excitement and significance. Rome certainly would fulfill both criteria, as would Jerusalem. Both cities can lay claim to being where the first of our current two millennia started. (For excitement Rio de Janeiro would also be great (and warm) and we briefly considered that in 1998, even tentatively arranging to meet a friend there. We would have started from New Jersey and driven south, through Mexico, Central America, and so forth. We would have liked very much to visit our French friends newly installed in Venezuela.) Then there was Hong Kong. It was high on our list of places where we wanted to find an apartment. It had excitement. And, when we left in 1985 we never imagined it would be fourteen years before we returned.

Maybe it was a bit strong to say above that we could spend New Years 2000 anywhere we wanted. There is that small matter of money. It costs to go places. Our millennium headquarters would have to be on our path, whatever that happened to be.

Apartments are like needles in a haystack

As the weeks in Paris rolled by and we had no success, not even a faint hope, in finding a short-term apartment in our preferred locations, we started considering plan B more seriously. Plan B: buy a van and travel east in Europe and then south for the winter, probably to Greece. What route would we take? Maybe Germany and Berlin, then Poland, Hungary, and Romania Just thinking of them and imagining getting to Greece by November made us realize how rushed we would feel. Maybe we should just drive directly to Greece, getting there just when it wasn't too hot.

This was not exactly the old "drive to China plan". Because we had spent the summer in Paris there would not be enough time to get through central Asia and cross the Palmirs before the passes would be blocked by snow. We didn't want to be a Donner party. So, if we did winter in Greece then in spring 2000 we could head east.

In Paris we started familiarizing ourselves with the vans on the market. Would we prefer a Boxer, Kangoo, or Traffic? How did we want to weigh size versus expense (gasoline generally costs four times as much per gallon or liter in Europe as we were used to in the United States.) We visited a very large used car dealer with dozens of vans and sat in them and dreamed. We bought the weekly "Argus", which gives the market price of all used cars. Our walks about Paris were slowed because we stopped to examine many of the cars we found with a "for sale" sign, almost always nicely made with desktop publishing. In one case Gerry saw a 1982 Traffic, which is a very large, boxy van, that seemed as if it would fit the bill. But it was too early in our stay to commit ourselves to it.

This last item, the 1982 Traffic, is one of many examples of how high used-car prices are in France compared to the USA. We sold our 1986 Cadillac Cimmaron for $750, which distressed Gerry greatly because it was in such good shape. Our friend Moshe sold his 1988 Lexus for under $9000 and it was also in terrific shape. The asking price for the 1982 Traffic, and it was really beat up, was almost $2000. It takes at least $10,000 to get a compact car that is only five years old. Maybe we should have taken our bargain Cimmaron and driven to Caracas!

Time is running out

Our stay in Paris was getting shorter and shorter. Finally we got the email we wanted: we could have a place in Beijing. We jumped at the chance.