The Grown-Up's Guide to Running Away from Home, Second Edition: Making a New Life Abroad (22 page)

Once in the country, ask for discounts before you buy a train ticket. Many countries offer lower prices on trains during off-peak hours or discount tickets for seniors—sometimes as much as 50 percent off—or provide savings for two people traveling together.

The typical American shuns buses as a time-consuming and shabby travel alternative. Leave those thoughts back in the States. In some areas overseas, buses are extremely popular—sometimes they’re even your only alternative.

For example, Mexico’s first-class buses are literally the Mercedes of buses. On longer trips, they provide a snack of a sandwich, chips, and a soft drink. You can relax in plush seats and read or watch videos of movies and entertainment features. Of course, being a relative newcomer to the country you’ll probably want to watch the scenery. That’s another reason why bus travel is more interesting overseas. You can sit back and enjoy the view, without the hassles of driving.

Unless you’re wanted by the FBI, running away does not include melting into the misty isles of Ireland, never to be seen again.

You’ll want to maintain contact with friends, family, and business associates back home. Keeping in touch will, in fact, be a necessity if you have children in college, elderly parents, or investments that bear watching. No matter how much you think you’ve simplified your personal and financial life, undoubtedly some pesky detail needs handling.

Running away is different from traveling on a vacation, which lasts a relatively short period of time. On vacation you’re not concerned about changing your address or having mail forwarded. You’re the one sending the postcards to friends, not the other way around. But if you’re gone more than a month or two, you’ll want to receive mail wherever you may be.

The way you handle mail forwarding and other forms of communication with correspondents in the States will depend on your destination and especially on your residence and traveling habits. Will you stay in one location with a regular mailing address? Or will you be traveling regularly?

Transferring all mail from the old residence to the new one is the normal system when people move. However, if you’re planning an adventure with temporary housing overseas, telling all your correspondents the new address may not be an option at first. We were renting a house for the first four months and didn’t know exactly where we would be afterward. It wasn’t worth changing the mail to that address, only to change it again.

We solved the problem by doing the change of address to a PO box in the States for forwarding (for how and why this works, see the explanation that follows). However, if you’ve already found a specific location overseas
where you intend to settle for sufficient time, just supply your new address to friends and business contacts.

Your local post office has change-of-address kits including handy postcards that you can fill out and mail, with space for your old address, the new one, and the date the new address will be in effect. Send these postcards to anyone who sends you mail so your correspondents can update their files to send mail directly to your new location. These post office cards are simple and to the point. Be aware, however, that magazines may not transfer the subscription overseas due to the increased mailing costs. The international edition of
Time
magazine is more expensive—and smaller!

We wrote notes to friends and family informing them of our plans and how to contact us. With email, it’s a simple matter to write a “Dear Friends” letter and broadcast it.

Remember to notify the post office itself of your new address. It’s easy to forget to notify a contact, so if you do miss someone, their mail can still be forwarded to you.

The U.S. postal service will forward first-class mail for a year. It will forward second-class mail, which includes magazines, for sixty days. Parcels and bulk mail (third class) will not be forwarded. If you forget to notify someone and mail is forwarded, be sure to notify that correspondent of your new address.

Changing your address with each correspondent is the simplest way to keep your mail coming—and the most affordable. It eliminates the middleman by having your mail transferred directly to you without your having to use a post office box or forwarding service. Unfortunately, this system doesn’t work if you’ll be traveling or don’t know where you’ll be living right away.

If you don’t want to pay charges for overdue postage, consider how much you want items that are heavy, such as magazines and annual reports. Cancel any that are not worth the cost of overseas postage. This one caught us off guard when we paid $40 to have the forwarding service mail us what turned out to be a batch of thick annual reports and store catalogs.