Well, I’ve been doing a lot of research on cell phones abroad. According to tigerdirect.com France and Sweden both use GSM 900/1800 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/static/html/GSMbands-article.html) So this means that we can buy a unlocked Quad Band phone over here and use it abroad. All we need to do is buy a sim card which is country specific. Slowtrav.com has a good overview on the subject here, (http://www.slowtrav.com/europe/cell_phones.htm)

With that said, I’ve been talking a lot with a good friend of mine about getting an ipod, and doubling it as storage for movies, tv shows etc. But he made me realize that this is really rare experience and I should take advantage of this by not being so attached to my tech gadgets. Also the fact that my current mp3 player (my Sprint PPC-6700 Super Phone!) only has a 2gb memory card, so 80gb or even 30gb ipod is just overkill.

I also bought a new Thinkpad. It was on sale and I had a extra discount, it is the exact model that I picked out for this trip. It has a 160gb internal drive so I will have some room for music, movies and stuff. Couple this with a small phone that has a built in mp3 player and expandable storage like the Motorola L7 and I should be fine. So tech wise, I’m only taking a phone and a laptop.

On another note, Orbitz has the total flight time from Chicago to Lyon at over 12 hours. I used to work for an airline, so I know my way around a plane, but I’ve never been on anything over 5 hours. Here are a couple of links for long flights that I think will be useful. I will eventually add a page on travel tips when I have more content on it.

Gonna catch the Bull’s game, talk to ya later.