No Baggage

Yesterday while waiting in the jury room, I read a book titled No Baggage, by Clara Bensen.  A few weeks after meeting Jeff Wilson via OKCupid, she agrees to go to Europe with him for three weeks, from Istanbul to London, taking no luggage and making no reservations.  Clara took (including what she wore):  one green dress, 3 pairs of underwear, a cotton scarf, a black bra, a stick of lavender deodorant, a whole toothbrush, the retainer she'd been wearing since age 16, a contact lenses case, a pair of backup glasses, 2 tampons, an iPhone, an iPad mini, one notebook, one pen, her passport, a black shoulder purse, a stack of cowboy magnets to hand out as Texas souvenirs, a pair of sandals, and a tube of cherry ChapStick.  Jeff took even less and fit everything in his pockets.  Can you see yourself traveling this way?

E spent her sophomore year in Heidelberg, and Liz joined her for two weeks of travel around Europe during the Christmas holidays.  I know they traveled very light, perhaps like this.  They needed warm clothes since it was winter, and I remember Liz bought some sturdy water-resistant shoes.  But no roller bags for them!  They saw wonderful places and enjoyed themselves, able to go from train or bus right to the museum or whatever without worrying about storing a bag or dragging it around.

When I was flying back and forth to Phoenix last year it was indeed delightful to carry only a shoulder bag (the same messenger bag E used on her European jaunts), no roller bag or checked bag, to walk on the plane and just sit down without having to lift a bag into the overhead bin.  Of course that was a totally different kind of travel, from home to E's and back again, and again, and again.  I have a couple of trips coming up and plan to pack light.  We'll see.