Backpacker Buzz

What is it about travelling to big cities that makes me want to go home, buy a car and a condo, a $60 haircut and an entirely new wardrobe?

Travel, especially the backpacking variety, is supposed to prove that material goods are frivolous, that life can be lived with a limited wardrobe, that home is where and how you make it and that spending your money on experiences will make you infinitely happier than spending it on stuff.

I get that, and I agree with it. The $10,000+ I've already spent on this trip has been the best buy of my life. But right now I'm in London and I spent much of yesterday wandering around the trendy neighbourhood of Shoreditch, peering in windows along Brick Lane, sipping a latte in a cafe overrun with Macbooks. Then through the banking district where suited-up men and women would walk purposefully down the sidewalks, swing briefcases, yammer on Blackberries or slap me across the face with giant foam hands that read "I have an income, sucker" in big block letters followed by "and it's in British pounds" in smaller block letters (some of this may have been imagined). 

I saw an H&M shopping bag in a supermarket and I'm pretty sure I whispered "Oh God yes" out loud and made a few people uncomfortable with my staring.  All this coming from someone who sees shopping as something like going to the dentist - an activity that only needs to be done a couple of times a year, always alone, as quickly as possible, and usually with a grimace and misplaced sense of contempt.

When I was lounging beachside in Thailand, my tank tops and board shorts fit the bill just fine. Maybe it's something about sharing sidewalks with skinny jeans, cute flats, enough scarves to melt the world's ice caps and perfectly coifed hair while I lumber along in dirty hiking shoes, the only pair of jeans I'll have in my possession for most of the year and a smelly North Face fleece, but I suddenly feel like I want things, pretty things. 

On Sunday I fly to Cape Town, and will travel around Southern and Eastern Africa for seven weeks with a mind that will hopefully be filled with big game spotting rather than end of season sale spotting. But I'm back in Europe at the end of June and am a bit worried that I'll open my backpack in Stockholm and its wrinkled contents will stare back at me and actually say, "Seriously?"

But deep down I know that if living with only 60L of possessions also means I can travel to four continents and who knows how many countries over nine months, I'll walk down any European city street in dirty hiking shoes, well-worn jeans and a smelly fleece with my head high any day. 

But if I happen to wander past H&M over the weekend, I might just take a peek inside.