Seat of Our Pants

Europe has been on the travel agenda for the past month and a half. That means many things. The most important for us is seeing friends and family again. We can’t afford to jump around European hostels/hotels like we could in SE Asia or India. That’s just not in our budget. Our solution is a happy one: we stay with friends and family.

Rather than checking into hotel rooms, we’ve been graciously brought into homes – which is such a treat – and one that needs to be properly handled. I learned early on that there are a few simple rules to follow when you’ve been invited into people’s homes. The first is, of course, to be respectful of their space. The second equally important rule is to bring a gift. At home that gift was usually a bottle of wine. We can’t be toting around a case of wine on the road, we are barely under the airline weight restrictions as it is, so we’ve had to be creative.

Small, light gifts are the best, obviously. We’re backpackers after all. Gift options vary by region, but we’ve found that Tibetan prayer flags were the absolute best gifts we bought. You can buy them for almost nothing, they are extremely light and pack really well (translation: they can be stuffed into anything and survive bumpy roads like champs).

Collecting rocks in Nepal

Some of the failed (or nearly failed) gifts were those that I was sure we couldn’t do without. A pile of rocks were just given to my mother-in-law. Yes. For the last four months I was carrying around a bunch of rocks. They were odds and ends we picked up in Nepal that I couldn’t part with. Four months later I can tell you that I was very ready to do without.

I also bought an unstretched painting in Burma for my mom. I found it a few months later at the bottom of my backpack. It looked like the rest of my clothes – crusty and wrinkled. Luckily it straightened out after a good ironing (who knew!).

Our time in Europe is soon to come to an end. We’ve given nearly all our gifts away, just in time to fill our packs with new gifts. Sadly, we’ve run out of prayer flags but I’m willing to bet Turkey will have much to offer us. All that is left is to figure out how many Turkish carpets Martin will be willing to carry…

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