What We Packed

I thought that it might be helpful to post some of the details of what we packed, just in case any of you are planning a similar trip sometime.

Bags and other gear:
1 roller bag
1 65-quart backpack
1 diaper bag
1 work/laptop bag
1 preschool-sized backpack

And we also had...
1 carseat
1 backpack carrier for the carseat
1 stroller
We thought a lot about bags and gear because we couldn't do what we did for our trip to Spain last year. For that trip, my husband and I each carried a 65-quart backpack. For this trip, though, we needed the carseat, and its carrier is a backpack, leaving us without enough backs to carry everything. My husband and I each were able to take about 5 days worth of clothes. We did the same--with a couple of spares--for my daughter. Our thinking was that these clothes would get us about halfway through the trip, at which point we would do laundry. This plan ended up working out fine.

Diapers:
40 pull-ups
12 overnight diapers
8 swim diapers
It was hard to guess how many diapers we would need because we were in the middle of potty training when we left. My rule of thumb prior to this trip was to pack 8 diapers for every day of the trip, which had always provided me with a comfortable number of extras. This time I packed half of that and then added the overnight and swim diapers. It ended up being a lot more than what we needed, but that's OK. I will take some extra diapers in exchange for potty training that keeps going well despite the travel disruption!

Wipes: We took 1 pack of 100 and had plenty left over.

Snacks:
1 snack catcher filled with Cheerios
2 packs of raisins
6 little pouches of yogurt-covered pretzels
12 Dum Dum suckers
With the exception of the suckers, which we saved only for the airplanes, our strategy with snacks was to take enough to get us through the flights there and the first day or so. This worked well and even lasted us a bit longer thanks to all the tasty pretzels and pastries that we encountered in Germany and Austria. Next time I would try to take a different kind of snack container because a fair number of the cheerios escaped into the bottom of the diaper bag.

Meal time:
2 bibs that could be wiped down easily
2 sippy cups

Toys:
1 stuffed giraffe
1 play laptop
1 train (no tracks)
2 coloring books
24 Crayons
3 board books
Along the way, my daughter also accumulated a racing flag, a small bear, a paper beak, and bubbles.
We tried to take along the smallest toys we could that would still provide lots of entertainment. I think we made pretty good choices: still, it was a challenge for these toys to hold my daughter's interest throughout the trip. If the playroom at the Gartenhotel Rosenhof hadn't offered the chance for her to play with different toys for part of the trip, we might have been wishing that we had packed more--or we may have found ourselves shopping for toys on our vacation.

Travel guides: We brought along 2, both from Lonely Planet: Austria and Munich, Bavaria, and the Black Forest. We also consulted The Car Lover's Guide to Southern Germany but left it at home.

Thanks for reading! My next post will have some reflections to wrap up coverage of this trip.