Great true "Audiogon" story about this very subject. A couple of years ago I was selling a Parasound C2 and I got an email from someone asking if I would ship to France. I had never done that before, but said I would look into it. After researching the process I found that shipping to any EU nation was a pain in the ___ but as luck would have it my wife and I were taking our first trip to Paris and could he pick it up there? Well turned out he lived in Paris but we didn't do the deal (customs at CDG would have been a nightmare with a piece of complicated electronics) but.... He was very appeciative of the effort and invited my wife and I to dinner while we were in Paris. I thanked him, but thought his offer was a simple courtesy.
To jump foward, when we arrived in Paris there was a bottle of Champagne and an offer of dinner. We of course accepted, had a great dinner and got to see Eric's system. They lived in an apartment, of course (which was amazing btw, on the Seine, not near it but on it, with a wall of windows looking out on the river framing the Eiffel Tower). He had commercial sub from a movie house, and I asked how his neighbors liked that. He had the only response that would work in that situation: The guy below him was completely deaf and could did not care. So if you look for a place with an old deaf guy below you, you can get any sub you like!!!
To jump foward, when we arrived in Paris there was a bottle of Champagne and an offer of dinner. We of course accepted, had a great dinner and got to see Eric's system. They lived in an apartment, of course (which was amazing btw, on the Seine, not near it but on it, with a wall of windows looking out on the river framing the Eiffel Tower). He had commercial sub from a movie house, and I asked how his neighbors liked that. He had the only response that would work in that situation: The guy below him was completely deaf and could did not care. So if you look for a place with an old deaf guy below you, you can get any sub you like!!!