Preliminaries

     Leaving the country for three months with only a backpack and a small knapsack presents special challenges.  Foremost in my mind at the start of my planning was the matter of so little underwear to change, but as I approach "lift off" it has been overtaken by the global cellphone challenge.

     As a frugal traveller, I have made comparisons of every available detail of the trip: I have wrestled with  the labyrinthine rules governing ATM withdrawals --you must know the difference between a "usage fee" and a "foreign transaction fee"-- and you must ask your bank to tell you specifically at what rate they exchange your currency for a foreign brand before basking complacently in the certitude that as a client, you are favored.  However, nothing quite compares to the problem of setting up an international cellphone  number at a reasonable rate.

     If you use your U.S. phone, you will pay dearly.  If you have a foreign phone and have relied on a SIM card in the past, it probably was linked to the country you are in.  If, as I will, you are visiting Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and Ireland,  juggling sovereign state SIM cards is an annoyance.  So, I hightailed it to the local STA Travel agency in my neighborhood and let Sophia, the very smart twenty-something agent, sell me a global SIM card with a U.K. phone number.  It cost forty dollars, but it does nothing more than open the international portal:  you must make over an initial sum of money before you can start calling.  Incoming text messages are free, but not outgoing, and there is a ten cent charge on every phone call you make.  The customer service person in India who explained this to Sophia and me, originally said that this was just a charge that was levied at the start of a phone call, but when pressed, agreed that whether it was levied at the start or at the end of a call, it was a ten cent per call fee.

     Sophia told me that in the U.S. cell phones are blocked so they will not sell global SIM cards for U.S. phones.  In Europe, SIM cards are generally unblocked she said.  Mine excepted.  Try as I might, dredging up every pamphlet that came with my Orange (trademark) phone; using the cellphone numbers and PIN codes that I wrote down on a scrap of paper and attached to the company literature; trawling the Orange website, has proved a dismal failure.  Calling the UK customer service line, I spoke with a nice young woman with a British inflection that was easy on the ear, but got nowhere.  I went back to the website and followed the prompts as I understood them, and was routed to an interactive customer service program which emitted a series of numbers, some of which were part of the phone number of my Orange phone.  I plugged them into the phone and got a message back that I had put in too many numbers.  So I plugged in my PIN number: I had put in too few numbers.  With each try I lost a turn.  I have gotten down to three more turns before I am --banished? cut off? disconnected?

     If I cannot get my Orange phone working before I leave I will probably not have a functioning cellphone until I reach France, a month after I start out.  That is because when I am in Italy, Austria and Germany, each country will have its own cellphone providers, eager to sell me one of their phones.  That is how I ended up with a Vodafone, a German cellphone, purchased in Baden-Baden, a few years back.  The amiable and knowledgeable salesperson explained many things about how to use the phone I was purchasing, except that once I went over the border to Strasbourg, the phone would no longer work with the SIM card I purchased to go with it.

     I thought I would try to see if my Vodafone might be, like the majority of European cellphones, unblocked; but I didn't get the chance to test the proposition, because the phone has run out of energy and needs to be charged.  It has a very funny charger hole --just a tiny pinprick of a hole-- and I can't find the charger among my drawer-full of chargers for Blackberries, cellphones, and foreign electrical converters.

     I did find the charger for the Orange phone, though; but it doesn't fit into my electric plugs because it is French, not American.  So I searched for the converters I bought when I purchased the IPad2 to take on the trip, but they only seem to work on IPads.  So I went to a drawer in which free headsets, earplugs for flights, and converters bought on earlier trips are kept.  Here I found a European converter which plugs into my Orange charger cord, which plugs into my Orange cellphone.  However, the Orange phone doesn't have an outside screen to let you know that the phone is charging, so I opened it up.  At last some success: the screen said "Chargement".  Perhaps I can find my German cellphone charger, and when I do, I can charge my German Vodafone, and when it is charged, I can see whether, like most European cellphones, it is unblocked, and I can put my Global SIM card in it behind the cellphone battery, and contact the UK number so I can give them some money so I can make some telephone calls in Italy, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

     I have one last resort, if I cannot find the charger for my Vodafone: I am going to take my Orange to my French class, and see whether my French teacher can help me out.  I am bringing a prepaid U.S. phone card with a toll-free access number with me, so if need be, we can call France, and try to find out why I cannot unblock my Orange.  If that doesn't work, I just won't have a cellphone until I reach France, a month later.  Which means that I will have used up one month of my three-month license to make international calls using my UK-originating global SIM card, without having made one phone call.