T A B L E_T A L K Describe your experiences and dreams of hitting the highway in a Road Trips discussion in Table Talk's Wanderlust area   How-to, why-not and what-for -- find it all at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Night of the living kava By Eric Hansen A traveler trips out on a magical root in the South Pacific (03/25/99) May I help you? By Jack Goldfarb From saffron to leather to edible silver paper, Johnny the market boy knew where to find it in the teeming Calcutta marketplace (03/24/99) Transylvanian nightmare By Jeffrey Tayler A young man bears the lasting burden of Romania's depraved dictator with a dignity that transcends his grim surroundings (03/23/99) The camel market of Daraw By Kristan Schiller In Egypt, a centuries-old business thrives at the end of the 40 Days Road (03/21/99) Helen of Troy is in my taxi By Rolf Potts A wanderer discovers the ambiguity of language and love in the Philippines (03/19/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		RING IN THE LOSER | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - England stands out as perhaps the sharpest example of how a gargantuan millennial effort is producing few good options come New Year's Eve. The British have become uncharacteristically giddy over the year 2000. A digital millennium countdown clock stands over the Thames; the BBC has budgeted $35.4 million (all money figures in this story are U.S. dollars) for television coverage of the event; and Tony Blair's government is erecting a gigantic Millennium Dome to house the festivities and give the BBC something to film. No matter what anyone tells you, this is the worst of all possible options. Government-run parties are never good. And even though the people at the "New Millennium Experience Company" have assured me that booze will be flowing, the night is billed as an all-ages event, a sure sign that it will be fun for the whole family excluding yourself. There are other options, though. The Café de Paris, a glittery 1930s-style nightclub tarted up for the '90s, is Piccadilly circus' home to faux oil barons and wannabe models. For the millennium, the cafe's management is only considering rental bids in the region of $1.61 million. If there are no takers, they'll probably auction off a Porsche, putting individual tickets somewhere around $1,932 per person. So, if whoever's renting it is even thinking of permitting a pauper like me to clink glasses with the Pernod 'n' Prada crowd, there's no hope that I'll be able to afford it. But perhaps I should be looking for something more traditional, something with history. Like the Savoy, that legendary bastion of cultivated style, the hotel where actor Richard Harris keeps a room, where Sir Laurence Olivier first laid eyes on Vivien Leigh. The Savoy's first millennium inquiry came in 1977, and they've been tumbling in at an alarming rate ever since. So great is the need to attend this event that a ballot was held to separate the lucky from the merely rich. Tickets start at $11,270 per couple and the Savoy is describing the party as the greatest it has ever thrown. Which means it's supposed to top the number it threw in the summer of 1905, the one that featured a baby elephant, a five-foot cake, arias sung by Caruso and a silk-lined gondola filled with 12,000 carnations. This year, the hotel is promising, among other distractions, a Dom Perignon party, a seven-course meal, gambling in the Princess Ida room and a surprise cabaret at midnight. I imagine the night will go something like this: The main floor will be filled with a selection of authors, actors, politicians and acquaintances of the queen. Men are in dinner jackets, lounging in the wood-paneled Pinafore Room, dipping the ends of their cigars in cognac. The women, ubiquitous Dom in hand, form an archipelago of clusters across the main hall, their slinky dresses clinging to their massaged bodies, their heels arched high over freshly polished floor. Newcomers are met by the mirthful buzz of gentlemanly banter with a counterpoint of female chirps and giggles. I'm in my flat while this is happening, of course, dreaming of chef Anton's seven-course meal. The lights are off and I've wrapped a duvet around me. I stare out the window at the pub across the street where a band of soccer hooligans embrace each other in a bout of tribal unity as I feel the first seconds of the next thousand years settle upon this cruel Earth. Perhaps I can avoid this kind of millennial misery by aiming for something more, well, within my means. I could rent a Thames riverboat. Maybe there truly is nothing more glamorous than chugging down a river as old as it is murky. It will be dark and cold, it likely will be raining, and if the waves are bad, the liquor that goes down might easily come back up. I suppose I could hope for the boat to strike a navigation buoy and send the evening to a Titanic ending, later to be documented in a low budget made-for-TV romance/thriller. I phoned a company and was quoted a rental fee of $258 per hour for a boat that holds 50 people, although there would be additional charges for food and entertainment. It seemed reasonable enough. When I asked if this price would stay the same for the millennium, the man on the phone laughed. On Dec. 31 the same boat will be going for somewhere between $32,200 and $48,300 for the night, but they are all booked anyway. The price is so exorbitant because he has to pay each staff member $2,415. Staffing millennium parties is so expensive, he explained, that most clubs and bars in London would simply be closing their doors for the night. I'd be lucky to find anything, he warned, and then said it didn't matter for him because he was going to Sydney. Then he hung up. Going abroad isn't an option either. Millennial airfare is predictably expensive. But the financial demands of a trip pale in comparison to the Herculean effort that would be involved in organizing my disorganized friends to make it the kind of event that will leave me savoring the transcendent warmth of human friendship as the new millennium's first dawn lights its virgin skies. Instead, I'll probably pluck some well worded last-chance offer and find myself on a beach in Tunisia, seated next to an athletic couple from Utah who steer the conversation toward God and then tell the waiter not to bring any more wine. The more I think about it, the more it becomes apparent that there is a mad rush to bring in the next thousand years and I'm getting trampled at the rear of the pack. It's a race in which those near the pole position are most likely to win. Others, like me, who haven't qualified might as well pack a lunch, get a good seat and think about the millennium that might have been, the bragging that might have been done. I dream of the bubbles, the dancing, the kissing of beautiful strangers. I imagine the next day's journey home, on horseback through a society devastated by mass computer failure -- bank accounts erased, transportation networks thrown into chaos, the landscape littered with the carcasses of fallen satellites. I think of the stories I will tell my grandchildren and settle deeper into the reliable unreality of anticipation. Because, as Julian Barnes said, "Who needs to burst into fulfillment's desolate attic?" Not me. SALON | March 26, 1999 Mark Schatzker is a Canadian freelance writer living in London. His last story for Salon Wanderlust was on Patagonia.