Ten Year Guarantee. Not!

photo by hilldreamer

If you buy a set of luggage in the United States, it often comes with a 10-year guarantee. This 10-year guarantee is meant for Americans who have an average of two weeks of vacation a year—the least amount of vacation time in the western world.

If you move to Europe, where people have four to six weeks of vacation, the luggage you bought stateside now has more like a three to five-year guarantee. Remember this before you start blaming your beat up bag on Samsonite. Because maybe you should blame yourself.

Travel freak.

Takes one to know one. Last week, while vacuuming her Swiss apartment, Writer Abroad found a zipper handle on her carpet. It was from her luggage whose last and now final resting place will be Swiss Bunker That Is Her Basement.

Yep. Another one bites the dust. But Writer Abroad couldn’t be more pleased.

Writer Abroad thinks that having a dilapidated piece of luggage is one of the best things you can show for your life—especially if you’re a writer. She keeps them piled up in Swiss Bunker That Is Her Basement so that she can be reminded of just how much she’s seen of Europe and learned about the United States as a result.

In that spirit, she’s looking forward to her next bag beating. And what do you know, it’s Easter weekend, a four-day weekend here in Switzerland. So along with her travel journal, she’s getting out her newest travel victim. Let’s see what kind of havoc a bit of Slovenia can create on this little Samsonite.

Do you take pride in your beaten up bags? Will you be treating them to a little Easter pounding? Writer Abroad hopes so. She wishes you, your family, and your luggage a very Happy Easter.