All That You Can't Leave Behind
“You know there's a limit to what the airline will allow you to carry, right”? My brother asks. He is standing next to me, pointing at the things crowding my suitcase. “Mm-hmm”. I mumble. "What do you need all those maps for? You're going home aren't you?". Quickly thinking of ways to get him out of the room, I turn to a technique that has never failed me in the past. H umming Peter Gabriel’s hit single ‘The book of love’, out of tune, and on purpose. It works like a charm. I could have done it with any song for that matter, but this was the one playing in my head just about then :-) He leaves me with all my bags, a pile of clothes and a bunch of other random stuff, shaking his head disapprovingly as he walks away. I stare back down at my suitcase. Just a few months prior to this moment, I was packing for a trip that would turn out to be my longest stay away from home. Back then, I had written a blog post about how important it w