PG Tips - Musings on Packing

Packing for nearly four months is hard. In addition to having to cram it all into one or two suitcases, you also have to prepare yourself for a variety of occasions, climates and situations, as well as enabling yourself to be comfortable mentally and physically, wherever you are. Fortunately, I'm fairly adept at imagining various scenarios, and I've come up with solutions to most every-day issues, resulting in some, uh, unique things in my luggage.

The oddest thing in my suitcase is a pack of PG Tips English Breakfast Tea. As the daughter of an Englishman, tea runs in my veins. It is a staple of my household, with a pot usually brewing and the hot water kettle regularly rumbling. My parents and I wake up one another with cups of hot tea, ready for sipping in a cozy bed (my mother will complain that I don't do this enough for them - she's right, but that's another story). My point being, to me, tea means home.

It's so normalized in my lifestyle that I hadn't even considered that it may not be available in the type or quality that I wanted while I was abroad. My mother mentioned it offhandedly to me one day and the concept of not drinking tea for months reverberated around my brain. Apparently, this was also a haunting thought to her, so fortunately, I received a pack of PG Tips for Christmas that will be snugly tucked into a corner of my suitcase and cross the Atlantic Ocean with me for consumption in Germany.

I'm sure that this may raise some eyebrows in my host family, perhaps even some unfounded implications that I'm a little stuck-up about what I'm consuming. But, to me, this pack of tea means that I can return to my homestay after a long-day running around Berlin or wherever, and have a cuppa at home. That, in itself, is priceless, as it fulfills the advice of my mother that I live by: "A cup of tea makes everything better." It will remind me to breathe, relax and enjoy.

So, that's the strangest thing in my luggage. Well, that or a miniature Easter Island head statue. Don't ask in regards to that one.

15 days.