How To Pack A Day Pack
If you’re a tourist, traveling student, or person under pressure to bring home those “great European adventure” pics, you’ll need to be able to plan properly for what you carry with you when you’re exploring the city of the day. I’ve put together a list of what are essentials for a day pack when I’ve traveled in the past:
- Bottled water. Depending on the size of the city you are visiting, or if you are visiting on a Sunday, your ability to buy a reasonable sized bottle of water can be much lower than you’d think. Public water fountains aren’t a common sight in Germany, so pack at least a 1 liter bottle.
- A battery bank. A battery bank is a better plan to keep your mobile devices charged than a wall charger when you’re visiting a city. You won’t be tethered to an outlet (if you can find one to use), meaning you won’t give up precious time waiting for you’re phone to have enough battery.
- Sunblock. If you’re going to be walking a city all day, and the weather is even halfway decent, you’ll need sunblock. It doesn’t come to mind necessarily because you’re going to a city instead of the beach, but city sidewalks don’t exactly have a lot of shade in th summer.
- An umbrella. When the weather forecast says “cloudy,” there’s a risk of rain, and it’s better to be dry than scrambling to buy an umbrella, or have to wait out a storm.
- ”Pee money.” Pack a few 50 cent and 1 Euro coins. If this doesn’t make sense to you, check out the recent post here.
- A small shopping bag. You can fold up a plastic or reusable shopping bag, or buy a bag that is made to fold down to a particularly small size. If you plan on buying souvenirs or are grabbing some food at a shop in town, having a bag ready is super handy.
- A game plan. Regardless or whether you’re a tourist or student traveling around, make a plan in advance. If you don’t have a German phone data plan, don’t plan on using free WiFi all over the place. Germany doesn’t have the best options for it. Also, just because a city is “walkable,” that doesn’t mean those two things you know you want to see aren’t a mile and a half up a winding cobblestone covered hill apart.
You don’t need to carry an actual backpack when you travel. A favorite of mine is to use a drawstring bag, the kind often used for carrying gym clothes. It’s small, lightweight, and doesn’t have to be put in a locker or bag check at museums that require larger bags to be stored instead of brought in.