A different sort of collegiate shopping list!

[Delaney Gale]

After I saw the most excellent suggestions on Mattarias' "shopping list" thread, I realized- hey, maybe you guys can help me with my cluelessness!

I'm in college, and I'm going on study abroad in Hungary from August to March. The climate is pretty familiar to me- I'm a Michigan native, and apparently Budapest has a just-slightly warmer climate. I have a few auto-immune nasties that make me especially vulnerable to cold weather (the 70-degree AC in my office, even after trying to raise it to 75, makes my hands cold and therefore painful), but I normally have some good ideas on how to pack for that. However, clothes dryers are apparently not at all common there. To make it even more fun, my guidebooks inform me that Hungarians tend to dress rather stylishly.

Basically, I'm bringing two largish suitcases, a laptop case/backpack, and a WolfPak single trumpet case (the only spare space in that thing is in the trumpet's bell). I can have stuff shipped to me, but I'm trying to keep that to a minimum because I'm already having my mom ship some of my fencing equipment (what fencer could go to Hungary and not fence!?) and I don't want to tax the family checkbook too much.

World travelers of GiTP, what have you found to be indispensable on long trips? What sort of things would you suggest to pack that would be neat/presentable/warm/easy to air-dry?

[LCR]

You're going to Europe, which is great. Welcome to the real world.
What you really need in terms of stylish clothing is:

• A corduroy jacket, preferably brownish or black (example)
• A leather jacket (something like this)
• Sunglasses (Ray Bans do the job, anything else can be bought cheaply at local boutiques)
• Some basic jeans (you should already have those)
• Maybe corduroy trousers (example)
• A coat (avoid those with a fur rim, anything else will do it) for the colder days (example)
• A scarf, or two
• Some shirts (slim fit, example)
• Some longsleeves
• Some nice pullovers (believe it, brown and orange look great together in a woolen pullover)
• Nice trainers (maybe those Converse All-Stars, but then everybody tends to have them these days)

[Delaney Gale]

You're going to Europe, which is great. Welcome to the real world.
What you really need in terms of stylish clothing is:

• A corduroy jacket, preferably brownish or black (example)
• A leather jacket (something like this)
• Sunglasses (Ray Bans do the job, anything else can be bought cheaply at local boutiques)
• Some basic jeans (you should already have those)
• Maybe corduroy trousers (example)
• A coat (avoid those with a fur rim, anything else will do it) for the colder days (example)
• A scarf, or two
• Some shirts (slim fit, example)
• Some longsleeves
• Some nice pullovers (believe it, brown and orange look great together in a woolen pullover)
• Nice trainers (maybe those Converse All-Stars, but then everybody tends to have them these days)

Haha, yeah, I'm looking forward to escaping the Citadel of Urban Decay (I love my hometown but that's an unfortunately apt description).

I wouldn't have thought about a corduroy jacket, and that seems like a decent idea. Being that I'm a poor college student, the leather jacket will probably not happen, but I love the style of all the stuff off the website you linked, particularly that jacket *pulls out graph paper* time for me to get designing ^^. There's an aran pullover I've been drooling over that I think I'm going to cast on for, I suppose it'll give me an excuse to go spend irresponsible amounts of money on yarn.

Would t-shirts in the general vein of the one you linked be generally appropriate for a college student? Also, would fingerless gloves be considered ok to be wearing about? I'm more or less dependent on them.

[LCR]

Sure, those shirts are basically exclusively worn by students
About the fingerless gloves: Sure, whatever you fancy. Really, wear whatever you're comfortable in. All those clothes may look very cool and unique, but once you get to any given university, the majority of students wears things like that. So fingerless gloves might be the accessoire that set you apart from the masses.
You also might want to buy all your clothes in Hungary, since Eastern Europe is so much cheaper than Western Europe or even the US.
So maybe there's still money left for a fancy leather jacket ...

[Delaney Gale]

I do like the idea of buying some additional clothing in Hungary. I'll just pick up some basics here and add supplements once I get there, I suppose.

Oh, another appropriateness question, since I figure you might be a better judge of this than I (since I'm several thousands of miles away)- I have a helix piercing (top of the ear cartilage) that's almost completely healed, so I want to pick up something to switch to once I can take out the starter jewelry. Would it be best to keep that extremely subtle, or would something more wild than a hoop be acceptable?

[LCR]

Really, do whatever you like. Europe in general and especially students are extremely liberal. And an ear piercing (even if it's not the ear lobe) is accepted in all parts of society.
Hell, as a student, you can get away with almost all kinds of freaky tatoos, piercings, occasional wearing of women's clothes (if you're a guy) or whatever you fancy.

[Delaney Gale]

Great! ^^ The cultural briefings for my program were terrible- they lumped us in with Spain, France, and Germany, and about every useful thing they said was followed by "except for Hungary".

[LCR]

Well, I've never been to Hungary in person, but really, students in Europe tend to be all the same, apart from local quirks, which I'm afraid, you'll have to find out on your own. Which can be quite fun.

[Mr. Moon]

A tip for packing as much as possible:

Instead of folding things, roll them up into tight, small bundles. Shirts, pants, jackets, anything goes. Stick as much stuff in your shoes/anything that takes of a lot of space and has a hole in it. Wear as much as you can to save even more space.

[Serpentine]

Another note, good for packing in general: Do not take anything that you haven't worn at least recently. You're not magically going to start wearing it just because you're somewhere else. I may have paraphrased that from somewhere, but I'll be blowed if I can remember where...

[Yiel]

In regards to your piercing, get the your jewelry from your local piercing shop while you still share a first language. I lost a ball from my tragus piercing while in Spain and had to get replacement jewelry, which due to the language differences of what I wanted, and what they thought I wanted, was far too small. This led to a nice fun infection (and no more tragus piercing).

Also, if you have an auto-immune problem - take a couple of ibuprofen before getting on the plane, and again just before landing. It will help your body deal with the environmental changes.

(Oh... you might like these: Broad Street Mittens)

[Rockphed]

Well, I've never been to Hungary in person, but really, students in Europe tend to be all the same, apart from local quirks, which I'm afraid, you'll have to find out on your own. Which can be quite fun.

Students in the US are pretty much the same from one University to another. Europe just has older universities

[Delaney Gale]

Another note, good for packing in general: Do not take anything that you haven't worn at least recently. You're not magically going to start wearing it just because you're somewhere else. I may have paraphrased that from somewhere, but I'll be blowed if I can remember where...

Heh, in that case I'd be wearing plaid shorts and a Zelda hoodie the entire time. But I get the sentiment, and I completely degree.

(Oh... you might like these: Broad Street Mittens)

Excellent opinions in general, but you get Awesome Points for reading Knitty.

[Mattarias, King.]

I indirectly had something to do with helping someone? Sweet! self-worth points all around!

^^: Eheh, glad I could (kinda, in some odd way) help. But on to the main subject.

"when in rome, do as the romans do", ne? thus, I echo just packing light and buying stuff there. I haven't been to europe (the middle east doesn't count as europe, does it? ), but since the clothes and stuff are native to the place, they'll net you a nice circumstance bonus towards getting used to it. :)

Plus, you'll get some nifty souveniers that way.

[LCR]

Now, Rome is incredibly expensive. And if you don't speak Italian, all those shop owners mess with you in ways you can't even imagine. They made me pay 13€ for a slice of pizza and a small sprite.