Siquid mantica non capit, domi relinquendum est.

Another shining example of "Anything said in Latin sounds profound." It means "If it doesn't fit in your knapsack, leave it behind." Rick Steves phrased it quite nicely as "You can travel happy, heavy, and cheap. Pick two." 4 shirts, 2 long pants and 1 shorts pretty much suffices for day to day clothes especially if you get all non-cotton for sink washing and hang drying. (Socks and boxers are gonna be the determining factor for laundry days. God help us dividing and rematching 20 white socks after the tumble dry.) Neither of us are taking computers, the cell phones won't work, and I don't have an ipod.

Patrick has finished packing; the photo above shows everything he's taking, the photo at left shows our documents. We've taken closer images of each and stored them in a safe place to act as backups/reference should we need them. The photo also shows off flickr's slick photo-embedding. We'll be hosting our photos over there and linking to the highlights here.

With about 36 hours till wheels up it's mostly odds and ends left. I'm working on getting calling cards printed so that we can dispense with scuzzy bar napkins or opera programs. The gentleman adventurer does not bum a pen from a new acquaintance to provide his contact information. We're also ransacking the guidebooks to bring the necessary pages with us while leaving the bulk behind. I guess we could do that on the plane if we run out of time. Course, we'd have to chew the pages out with our teeth due to DHS/FAA/TSA hysterics. I can't wait for European airports again. They've been dealing with this for so long that they're down to a reasonable bark:bite ratio. Something along the lines of "Ja, die nailclipers ist OK. Iffen du misbehaven, I hast ein Uzi. Kapische?" Remember, in Germany, if it's not verboten, you can do it.

[A bit of housekeeping: If you're viewing the blog from the wiki (ie. in an embedded frame) you might experience a little quirk in getting back to the wiki main page when you make comments. To solve this, I've added a link on the Comments page of the blog that will take you directly back to the wiki after you've added your comment.]

Edit: Mer-duh. I heard back from Sister Dominique. No dice; she says it's full up with the same ESA group that I can with the first time. Phooey. At least she understood. Maybe we can get in at Sacre Coeur. Not that hostels are bad, but I think it'd be great to change it up a little. Plus, nuns are remarkably cool.