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You will want to pack as
light as possible, especially if you are planning on taking trains or
boats. When I travel to Europe, I take trains everywhere and carrying
light luggage is very nice. It is easier to keep an eye on and it is
easy to put into sometimes small compartments. The key words to
packing for Europe are light, light, and light. I fit all my gear into a
school size backpack. For some people this may be an impossible or
frightening scenario! Below is a list of items that I brought and the
quantity taken, if more then one.
Also visit Dave's General Travel List
for a complete updated list of items normally taken on a trip.
Keep in mind that this all fit into a
school size backpack which contains one large compartment and 3 much smaller
ones.
-
T-shirts (2)
-
Flip flops
-
Tennis
shoes (which I promptly threw away after my hikes in the Alps)
-
Regular shorts
-
Swimming shorts
-
Socks
(2)
-
Underpants
(2)
-
Small
hat
-
Thin
lightweight long pants
-
Hooded
sweatshirt
-
Postcards (3 from
unusual places in the states!)
-
Small
soap bar
-
Small shampoo
containers (3)
-
Small
toothpaste
-
Small
toothbrush
-
Foam for keeping the
back part of the pack stiff (2) (this probably isn't necessary)
-
Small
radio (this may also not be necessary for most people)
-
Small
role of toilet paper
-
Passport
-
Travelers
checks
-
Currency
from your home country
-
Watch
-
Small pocket knife
NOTE: Small pocket knives
are no longer allowed to be carried onto airplanes - Small pocket
knives can still be taken with you on your travels, however they
must now be in your "check in" baggage.
-
Small
comb
-
Sunglasses
-
ATM
card
-
Visa,
MasterCard - other plastic
-
Picture
of family to show the local people (this is a good icebreaker)
-
Chap stick
-
Garbage
bag (for keeping dry)
-
Digital
camera - with a zoom lens
-
Small calculator
-
Photocopied
travel info -maps, hotels ect.
-
Photocopies
of passport, credit cards, ect.
There are some items on this
list that I rarely used. You may
not even want to wear socks. I was washing these the most out of any
article of clothing that I had. It certainly would be a time saver to go
sock less in sandals in the summer. I never used the garbage bag, but it was there in the
case of rain to cover me or my pack or both. I only used the pants,
hooded sweatshirt, and tennis shoes when I was high in the Alps. The
above seems like a bare bones list, but it served me very nicely while
in Europe. Pack for general needs, not the exception. Some things you
can certainly do without for a few weeks of travel.
If you purchase items and run out of space, some places will ship them
to your home country for you. Another item that I utilized, especially
after my purchases began to spill out of my limited space backpack, was
a large sturdy carrying bag made out of fabric. Besides carrying your
purchases around Europe, this bag is good for taking all your prized
possessions on the airplane for the trip back home.
With only one or two pairs of each article of clothing, I was doing
laundry fairly regularly. Most of the hotels I stayed in had soap. I did my laundry at nights after a day of sight
seeing. The laundry was done in the sinks using warm to hot water. For
most people who use washing machines - the art of hand washing clothing has
been lost. You really need to lather the clothing. Take a bar of wet
soap and wet your hands. Place the soap on a large part of the clothing.
Next take your palm and hand and run it in circles on the soap bar so
the lather begins to cover the article of clothing. Once you have the
clothing well lathered on all sides you are ready to scrub. Hold two
parts of the clothing and rub it vigorously against each other in a
circular motion. Do this on several points on the clothing. Next put the
clothing under the warm/hot water and squeeze it out. Repeat the entire
process one or two more times before completely wringing the clothing out.
The more water you can remove from the clothing at this stage, the
faster it will dry in the long run.
To be truthful, I only used this entire process every other time that I
would do laundry. Doing a quick lather and rinse can get you by for
several days, without odors and visibly dirty clothing.
After the wringing process I would hang the clothes to dry, either
outside the room, especially if there was a balcony, or inside the room
on the end of the bed or off of the chairs. Usually by mid morning they
were fairly dry. The beauty of having two pairs of the necessary
clothing is that while one is drying, you always have another clean
pair.
Keep in mind the above packing was done with concern for doing a lot of
walking around Europe and traveling by train. If you are renting a
vehicle you will certainly have more luxury of space when packing.
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