Baggage

Packing for this trip is really making me revisit my relationship with my belongings.  I'm determined to limit my baggage to the backpack above and a small shoulder bag for my camera and purse items.  I've learned from hard experience that the more I bring along on a trip, the less happy I am.  It's ironic: when you try to stave off unhappiness and discomfort by preparing and packing for every situation or mishap, you actually just end up bringing along so much stuff that you're unhappy and uncomfortable because your baggage is a pain in the rear to drag around.  Maybe there's a life lesson in there someplace!  :)  In any case, whatever I bring, I'll have to be able to transport on European budget airlines, which are notoriously stingy about baggage weight.  Plus, I'll be staying in the medina in Fez, the city center, which is the largest metropolitan area in the world closed to auto traffic.  So if I can't comfortably carry it a fair distance, I'd have to hire a donkey to do it for me.  Truly.  And how embarrassing would that be?

Anyway, this packing process will be a ruthless exercise in distinguishing what's essential and what's not.  I'm planning for two or three months on the road, with activities ranging from sleeping out in the Sahara to wandering through museums in Madrid and Rome.  It's especially tough given that I'll be spending a significant length of time in Muslim countries where I really need to cover up with long sleeves and long pants regardless of how hot the weather gets.  I'm guessing that by the end of this trip, if hand laundry were an Olympic sport, I'd have a shot at gold.

Thank goodness for the Kindle app on my iPad and for my iPhone.  I can bring along a whole bookshelf and my entire music library in my pocket.  When pressed, I can be hard-nosed about winnowing down clothes and toiletries and stuff.  But if I had to do that with books or CDs (or, God forbid, cassettes!), I would turn to jelly.  I can't imagine the sleepless nights I'd spend worrying about whether I really needed all of the Shins albums, because Chutes Too Narrow had moments of glory but also quite a few songs that I don't care about at all, or whether I could justify bringing along Combat Rock just so I could listen to Rock the Casbah in a casbah.  Happily, they all get to make the trip, together with various episodes of Wallace and Gromit, Glee, and Rick Steves audio tours.  Whew, so glad I only have to deal with the unimportant stuff like shoes and shirts!  :)