The suitcases come out this weekend.
It's shaping up to be a busy weekend around here, even though it is a three-day holiday weekend. But perhaps the most important thing to happen this weekend will be the (once) annual voyage of our trip suitcases from the recesses of our basement to the welcoming light of our living room.
It'll be glorious.
We hopefully leave three weeks from Monday, so I'm guessing it's time. For the next 21 days the suitcases will sit in our living room, where we’ll stumble into them many times, and they’ll slowly be filled with everything needed for a week plus in Leipzig (or stuck in an airport somewhere between here and there). If this year is like all the others, when I open my suitcase I'll be amazed by the stuff I've left in there from the last trip three and a half years ago. There should be several plastic containers (used to safely transport chocolate and cereal), half a roll of bubble wrap (to safely wrap the chocolate before it gets put into the aforementioned plastic containers), various other non-plastic containers, a roll of duct tape, two unused washcloths, and an unopened package of socks, if I remember correctly.
Throw in a few shirts, some shorts, and a toothbrush, and I’m already packed a month before we leave!
Well, okay, maybe not TOTALLY packed, but with the stuff we're picking up at Target this weekend I think we're on schedule. We usually go to Target a few weeks before we leave and raid their section of travel-sized items. We pick up whatever toiletries, medicines, and personal care items we need and pack them in the plastic containers. Then the last night of the trip we toss whatever we haven’t used and/or won’t need, clean out the containers, and repack them with chocolate and other goodies. That way, we don’t go over our suitcase weight limit and have to pay a zillion dollars, and we get all of our stuff safely home.
Of course, that’s actually worked too well on several occasions. More than once I’ve emptied my suitcase so much that I've had to buy several rolls of paper towels to fill out the empty space. The paper towel serves a couple of purposes, though--the paper towels act as a great, lightweight filler, and once we get home, we have the joy of being perhaps the only people in the U.S. who are using strangely sized rolls of French or German paper towels.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be tossing pieces of clothing and other items we’ll be needing into the suitcases in our living room. A day or two before the trip, we’ll rearrange everything, pack it all neatly, and then put our TSA approved locks on them, where the suitcases then won’t be opened until we get to Berlin (unless, of course, US or EU security gets bored and feels the need to go through them, or we end up somewhere entirely unexpected). And that, of course, is optimistically believing our luggage gets to Europe the same time we do. Unlike, say, two of our previous trips.
So now when we look at our checklist of things to do, “bring suitcases up from the basement” can now be checked off. That only leaves, what....28 or 29 things left to go?
That is still, of course, assuming we get to go in the first place. Keep your fingers crossed.
On that note, have yourself a great weekend. I'll be back Tuesday!
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