Sometimes we do strange things and we regret a stupidity. Sometimes it is good to speak about and prevent others from doing the same  rubbish. Let’s talk about my mistakes. When I had my comeback with the backpack 2 years ago I was still insecure in many things. After all, this kind of travelling was very unusual for me after a 35-year backpack break. I had packed it so full that I could not take it as hand luggage. So I had to check it in and I wondered if it could break on the way.

Will the backpack be damaged if I give it up?

Such a modern backpack has a lot of buckles and flash fasteners. Everywhere you can adjust something, make it wider or narrower, hang it on, tie it down. You can also get stuck somewhere and tear something off. In order to avoid this, so a councellor in the Internet, one should let the good piece in foil seal.

Case filming, not only for cases

No, at least not if you believe the providers: „You have high-quality luggage that you want to protect from scratches and dirt? Then use the foiling service“, a provider advertises the service, “ Your luggage can be wrapped with stretch film for a protection from scratches and pilferage. So your luggage is optimally prepared for the flight“. Oh dear, now even the suitcase has to prepare itself for the flight: it is called suitcase wrapping.

A huge environmental mess. And nobody needs it!

Just a couple of years ago it was considered cool to have a worn, dented suitcase, as this was a clear sign for the much-traveled and sophisticated globetrotter. Today, the flawless suitcase is the trump card, perhaps a sign that you have a different, more suitable suitcase for every trip and every piece of clothing. And it is then wrapped in several layers of film on a rotating platform for 15 euros. While the packaging artist wrapped my rotating backpack in twelve meters of plastic, I already knew that this was a huge environmental peeve and that I would never do it again. My face still blushes with shame when I think of this my first, only and very last foliation at the airport.

Never again, you hear, dear baggage carriers at the airports of this world, never again!

Then, however, rather sew in thick linen fabric, as the South Americans sometimes do. The fabric can still be used afterwards. But you can’t get this plastic pellet off without bigger tools and without fighting with it. You should have seen me when I took my plastic sausage off the luggage conveyor in Montevideo…

Never again!

Never again!

I lifted the backpack off the luggage conveyor and had to carry it across my arm like a giant sausage to the customs controls. Inevitably. Not only does this look stupid, it’s uncomfortable. A Backpack should be possible to put on your back. But the shoulder straps were also welded in. Of course I had a knife with which I could have cut open the 15 meters of plastic foil. But where do you think that was? Right: In my welded backpack. So never again. It is also completely superfluous: on my further journeys without a protective cover nothing broke, neither on flights, nor on bus roofs and open loading areas.