Travelling REALLY Light

[giantsteve]

Check out this interesting article on Salon.com about a couple's three week long OK Cupid date throughout Europe with little more than their iPhones and the clothes on their back. It's an interesting read not only for the no bag travel (well the woman does have her purse) but the fact that this couple went on a 21 day long first date.

Could you do no bag travel? I know it's not for me.

[Trailhiker]

No Synapse?
No 3d cube?
No Side effect ?
No Pouch?

Oh my!

[Ms. Ferret]

I'd want at least a Cafe Bag.

[bermudajes]

I'm with Ms. Ferret. I love the idea (in theory) of extreme light travel, but I'd be more comfortable with a small bag like the SCB to hold a few toiletries, valuables, and maybe an extra shirt.

Maybe this should be my excuse to finally buy a SCB...

[Ms. Ferret]

I found an interview that provides some more information:
6 Questions For The Girl From "The Craziest OkCupid Date Ever" | TheExpeditioner Travel Site

It sounds like they stayed with friends most of the time, which makes a lot of sense. I'm mostly marveling at the decision to bring along an iPad, a second pair of sandals, and a full-size deodorant, but not a tank top or something.

[monkeylady]

My dear Ms. Ferret,

I'm with you. This couple was whacko, no doubt because they were so in love and probably spent more time nude than clothed. For me and Mr. Monkey Lady, after many years of marriage, we leave our clothes on now most of the time and we dribble food all down the front of us at every meal. If we didn't bring along extra clothing, we would be a sorry representation of our country as we travel abroad. And doing laundry daily is not our thing. Such a waste of time when you could be observing monkeys.


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[daisy]

It sounds like an amazing adventure/experiment - but I suspect they probably feel they've been there, done that.

from the article ...

Laughter rippled through the seats each time the lights flickered and the engine died. A round of cheers followed when the driver cranked it back to life. Surreptitious bottles of beer were passed from seat to seat and chocolates emerged from nowhere. I have no idea how we made it to Sarajevo, but I do know that that day embodied everything we set out to learn from our experiment.

Good thing that someone brought along some beer and chocolates, eh?

(I have a sudden craving for chocolate stout ...)

[Miking]

He gets an adventurous, spontaneous world traveler, I try online dating and I get a kleptomaniac hypochondriac who takes the liberty of changing all the contacts in my phone to her number and has a penchant for setting fires when left alone for a few minutes. Gotta say if I had to wear the same outfit for 3 weeks I'm not sure if red chinos would be my first choice.

[backpack]

The two of them have typical European silhouettes and clothes sizes, it is not unheard of for friends to lend dresses or other type of clothings to each other.

So they took one picture in "a virtual buff" and one with her green dress and his red pants/striped top.

The first picture is cropped so we don't know if they took a small bag each and left it with friends while sightseeing.

She wears contacts so she needed a contact lenses case and the things one need to clean them, but she could have bought everything in Europe and left the items at the hotels or places where they were staying.

While she depict herself as a freelance writer of modest means, she also says that she is an experienced traveller, which costs money. She also bought the ticket for the beginning of the travel season only one month in advance, again, probably not cheaply.

We don't know what kind of money Jeff earns or was born into. The "friends" could have been foreign exchange families. In Europe, American are pretty popular foreign exchange partners.

One of the biggest attraction of Europe is food. I cannot imagine being able to keep 1 outfit free of spills as well as dirt and grime for 21 days.

She said she washed her dress once every two days, which implies washing it late in the evening, along with one of the foundation garment and hope it would be dry the next day. That would mean not being able to go anywhere or settle for a dress that was still wet at checkout time.

It is also impossible to do couchsurfing unless one has night clothes, couches are usually in living rooms which are high traffic and low privacy areas.


It's a nice gimmick to boost blog hits but to us, on this forum, it is not that unusual to have a number of people travelling with only the Synapse 19.

[monkeylady]

Well said, backpack!


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