I have mused in the past on the subject of travel essentials, but when you are touring with Hermann and his Very Large Boot, more is possible.
The top item from the EuroEpic tour was, and remains, the Portable Flypaper. Some ingenuity would be required – for example, you need to hang the flypaper from something otherwise you will just get a superstuck Doris which is not the point of the exercise – but it would still be a great treat. On this tour I would pack slightly larger ones as the wasp has been our companion-of-no-choice in many low-coved restaurant terraces.
One item that we do travel with for some reason is a small table wedge. About 3cm long and made of a lightweight wood, this has actually sunk to the bottom of the daily rucksack and so tends to get forgotten, but again when dining on a terrace with its charmingly rustic pavement it is an instant fix for table wobble if you do remember it.
Next: a decent serrated knife. Only possible with end-to-end car touring (don’t want to create excitement in the airport) and needing to be produced with caution to prevent alarm from the waiting staff, it would be nice to know you can make your way through some of their more ambitious animal cuts.
The most practical dream at the moment would be a proper, UK-shaped, pillow. In Italy and Germany pillows tend to be square rather than rectangular and are usually provided in a pair of sizes, one very large and loosely filled, and one very small and stuffed. The choice feels like between resting your head on a wolfhound or a tortoise.
Sid has kindly volunteered to illustrate this post with a demonstration of how to sleep using the Large Pillow Alternative.
But our best fantasy travel companion for this journey would have been a full-size, operational but silent, air conditioning unit. Till then we dream, sweatily, on.