What is in the bags

People ask, so here it is. We each carry one backpack of about 30 litres that fits under a bus seat or in the rack of a regional train, which on some lines is the size of a shoebox. Nothing is checked in. Nothing has wheels, because nothing with wheels survives Italian cobbles or Greek village steps.

What is in mine, roughly in order of weight:

• Walking shoes, worn on travel days so they do not take up room.
• A pair of sandals that can also walk two hours on a path. The last pair could not; see Crete.
• Three shirts, two trousers, one warm layer, a rain jacket that packs into its own pocket.
• Underwear and socks for four days. There is always a sink.
• A thin towel, mostly for beaches and for rooms that charge for towels.
• A one-litre bottle, a folding knife that has never been anything but a cheese knife, and a spork.
• A paper notebook and two pencils. The notes on this site started there.
• A printed list of the timetables for the next few days. Phones die; paper only gets wet.

Marta carries roughly the same, plus the first-aid bag, the sewing kit and the good book. I carry the laundry soap and the second, worse book.

Things we stopped taking: a travel pillow (we sleep anyway), a guidebook (too heavy, and wrong about bus times in exactly the places where it matters), and a second pair of “nice” shoes, which in two years were worn once.

In winter the warm layer becomes two, and gloves go in. We learned that one in Andalusia.

— Jonas