LIBERATION DAY: You, too can enjoy the benefits of traveling without an annoying roller bag
Do you want to look and sound like a tourist? Ok! Then keep rolling away, but...
ATHENS — Ask almost any European city dweller what noise bothers them the most and I guarantee the response will be, after the blather from this or that entitled politician (on either side of the Atlantic) this: the clatter of plastic wheels from a tacky roller suitcase giving acoustic life to cobblestones and pavement cracks that was never intended.
Perhaps you are the model Gen Z traveler — be warned, dart en route — you think that staying in an Airbnb is staying authentic, you have money to fly from New York to Barcelona but are too cheap to take a taxi from the airport to the city and as a result you, along with the tight-fisted multitudes are out there right now, dragging your four-wheelie made-in-China plastic box across what used to be a quiet and charming European side street and yes, you are widely reviled: they’ve already banned those damn roller bags in Dubrovnik, didn’t you know?
Or maybe you didn’t know, because you’re busy staring into your phone while you try to Google map your way to the non-cozy Airbnb you booked in a neighborhood that was once actually a neighborhood, but that you as an indentured servant to some Silicon Valley startup have helped destroy.
You won’t stop in a cafe to ask for directions because the area you booked has none — or if there are any, mainly the locals know. The kind of locals that are gonna be nice to you only because they have to. Have you heard about those anti-tourist protests in Spain? Guess whose side we are on, muchacho?
We don’t know what the remedy is for this overtourism mess is — although a good start would be banning Airbnb and Instagram. One thing we do know is that to make presence more lightly felt, you should consider mothballing your roller bag and grabbing a duffel (or duffle) bag instead.
On a recent trip to Rhodes and some smaller islands around it, I made the mistake of overpacking, which essentially means I took a roller bag. Believe me, dragging one of those things over the rough cobblestones of the medieval town is not going to endear yourself to anybody, and if your attitude is “why should I care what the locals think"?” then I suggest you adjust your attitude and do the duffel (or duffle) waltz.
You will be amazed at what happens. Because the you’ll have to carry the weight of your belongings on your shoulder, you will automatically learn to travel with less. You will glide through the airport without making somebody trip over your wheeled suitcase. You will be able to place the bag in an overhead bin without having to worry about lid not closing because the wheels might stick out. Most duffles don’t have wheels.
You will look, maybe, like a local who’s on his or her way home from an overnight in Sitges or St Tropez, or on the way back home from the gym.
The bottom line is you’ll feel liberated. I mean, don’t you have enough burdens already? You, and the world too, can do with one less.🌍
