We correspondents travel less often than you might think. But we have a few tricks up our sleeves.
This gloss, as it seems increasingly clear to me, is subject to a fundamental error. Contrary to popular belief, we, as correspondents in general, and I, as a reporter in or from Brussels, do not spend our time circling the globe peripatetically. My work is stationary, with the exception of episodic trips to the plenary weeks of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and occasional trips to the capitals of the respective countries holding the EU Presidency. My last trip so far took place at the beginning of October, to beautiful Granada, to participate in the informal European Council.
This trip gave me the small but extremely rewarding triumph of traveling from Wednesday to Saturday with just a small backpack, which still had room for clean underwear and a new shirt for each day, as well as my laptop. The more inhumane it becomes to fly and use airports (and I’ve probably bothered you here many times with my complaints about this), the greater my desire to go through it with light luggage. Of course, I only achieved this feat because it’s usually very hot in Andalusia in autumn and Granada was spared any rain showers (which is obviously bad news for farmers in southern Spain). Anyway, I can give you a tip for economical packing: Roll up the folded shirts – and then quickly hang them on hangers in the hotel room so they don’t wrinkle.