Editorial note: this entry in the plan reads as a note-to-self rather than a title. Published here as the pillar page for the packing cluster below.
Most arguments for carry-on-only travel are lifestyle pitches wearing a packing list’s clothes — minimalism, decluttering, a faint smugness about not needing much. Set all of that aside. On an overland, multi-stop trip through places like the Balkans — furgons and sleeper trains, guesthouses up narrow stone stairs, towns built for walking rather than driving — carry-on-only isn’t a philosophy so much as a load-bearing decision about how the whole trip is going to function, made before a single item gets folded. This is the pillar page for that argument. The seven posts it links to below handle the specifics; this one makes the case those posts assume has already been settled.
Why this is a design choice, not a preference. Start with what’s actually measurable: the limits airlines set, and how little they agree with each other. On easyJet, the standard included cabin bag has to fit within 45 x 36 x 20cm, handles and wheels included, and stay under 15kg; a larger cabin bag, up to 56 x 45 x 25cm, is available only as a paid add-on. Ryanair’s free personal item is considerably smaller — capped at 40 x 30 x 20cm — with a second, paid “priority” cabin bag allowed up to 55 x 40 x 20cm and 10kg. Wizz Air lands in a similar place to Ryanair: a free bag no larger than 40 x 30 x 20cm, and a paid priority allowance of 55 x 40 x 23cm up to 10kg.
Three budget carriers relevant to Balkans travel, three different sets of numbers, none of them identical. That inconsistency isn’t an oversight — it’s close to the industry’s permanent state. In 2015, the International Air Transport Association floated a voluntary “Cabin OK” standard of 55 x 35 x 19cm, notably smaller than the roughly 56 x 45 x 25cm dimensions many airlines had been informally converging on, in response to overhead-locker crowding. The backlash from airlines and travelers was strong enough that IATA shelved the recommendation within months. A decade on, there still isn’t one universal cabin bag size — there’s a range that shifts by carrier, by fare class, and by how recently a given airline updated its policy.
The size limit and the weight limit don’t even always travel together, which trips people up more than the centimeters do. Ryanair’s free personal item comes with no published weight figure at all, but is measured against a rigid sizing frame at the gate; its paid priority bag adds a defined 10kg ceiling on top of the size limit. easyJet does the opposite, attaching a 15kg cap even to its smallest free bag. Wizz Air splits the difference, sizing its free bag on dimensions alone while capping the paid one at 10kg. None of that is intuitive from one airline to the next, and it means a bag that sailed through security on one budget carrier can still get pulled aside and weighed on another. The only reliable habit is checking the specific airline’s current cabin baggage policy directly before a trip, rather than trusting a number remembered from a previous flight or a different carrier entirely, since the gap between “fits” and “gate-checked with a fee” is often a matter of a few centimeters or a couple of kilograms.
The economics are just as real. Skipping a checked bag isn’t only about avoiding a wait at baggage claim — on a budget carrier, it sidesteps one of the fastest-growing and most variable line items on the ticket. Airlines worldwide collected an estimated $33 billion in baggage fees in 2023, up 15 percent from $29 billion the year before, part of roughly $118 billion in total ancillary revenue that now sits outside the base fare entirely. On the carriers most relevant to overland Balkans travel, that revenue shows up directly in the pricing: Ryanair’s checked bag runs to roughly €25 or £25 when it’s added online well in advance, while Wizz Air’s own published range for a checked bag spans from around €8.50 for the smallest weight tier booked well ahead, up past €100 depending on season and weight tier, with a further per-kilogram charge for going over. Both carriers price a bag added at the airport gate considerably higher than one pre-booked, which is precisely the moment most travelers end up paying it — not because they planned to check a bag, but because a bag that quietly grew over a trip’s worth of souvenirs and market finds no longer fits the sizer. On a budget fare, a checked bag added late can genuinely cost more than the seat did. None of that is a reason to feel virtuous about a smaller bag. It’s a reason to notice that “pack carry-on-only” and “opt out of the single most variable fee on a discount ticket” are, in practice, the same decision.
The case specific to overland, slow travel. Airline limits explain why a bag has to be small enough to board. They don’t explain why it needs to stay manageable for two weeks afterward — and that part is where most generic carry-on advice runs out, because it’s written with point-to-point city trips in mind, where a checked bag mostly just means a wait at the carousel. An overland trip through hill towns and coastal stops is a different physical problem entirely. A furgon has no separate hold and no porter loading it; luggage rides on a lap, wedged behind a seat, or standing in the aisle, and a bag too large for that becomes everyone’s problem on the vehicle, not just its owner’s. A guesthouse with no lift and a room up three flights of stone stairs is a normal, often better-value option in a hill town like Berat or Gjirokastër — not a flaw to route around — and it assumes a bag that one person can carry up a narrow stairwell without stopping twice to rest an arm. Cobbled streets are not a car-park-to-hotel-door proposition either; they’re an extended, uneven walk, sometimes steeply uphill from wherever the furgon actually stops, that a wheeled case handles badly and a soft-sided bag worn on the back handles well.
Underneath all of that is a simpler fact: nobody is coming to help carry something heavy on this kind of trip. There’s no porter, no valet, no elevator to assume, no driver who’ll load the boot while the passenger stands aside. A checked-size bag doesn’t just risk a fee on the flight in. It becomes a physical liability for the following two weeks, at every furgon stop, every guesthouse staircase, every old-town street too narrow or too uneven for anything with wheels to manage gracefully. It also shapes the trip itself in smaller ways that compound: a lighter bag makes a same-day change of plan — an extra night somewhere that turned out to be worth it, a last-minute onward furgon instead of the one originally planned — a genuine option rather than a logistical headache to be avoided. A trip built around moving every few days rewards exactly the kind of bag that doesn’t punish moving.
Where the case actually gets tested. All of this is easier to argue in the abstract than to hold up over a genuine two weeks. The friction shows up in predictable, specific places: a laundry cycle has to happen mid-trip rather than get skipped entirely, because there’s no spare week of clothing sitting in reserve. Winter adds real bulk that a warm-weather list never has to plan around. Somewhere around day three, most people traveling this way hit a moment of doubt that something essential got left behind. None of that undermines the argument above — it just means the argument is a starting position rather than a finished one, and the honest version of a pillar page points toward where each specific piece of friction gets handled, rather than pretending none of it exists. That’s the actual reason this is a cluster of seven posts instead of one long one: each piece of friction deserves the space to be worked through properly rather than folded into a single paragraph and waved away.
A guide to the rest of this cluster. This page argues the why. The seven posts below handle the how, each doing a distinct job rather than repeating the others:
The 5-4-3-2-1 Packing Rule, Tested for Two Weeks — a specific, named packing formula, checked category by category against two real weeks of wear, including exactly where it broke.
Two Weeks in Europe, Carry-On Only: What Actually Went In — the literal, itemized contents of the bag, not a formula or a philosophy.
The Two-Week Checklist, and What I Left Behind — the pre-trip logistics that matter as much as the packing list, plus what got left out on purpose.
Packing for Two Weeks in Winter Without Checking a Bag — the same carry-on constraint, solved under the added weight and bulk of cold-weather layering.
The Things Everyone Forgets — a short, deliberately universal list of small items that cause outsized trouble when they’re missing.
Is a Carry-On Really Enough for Two Weeks? — the skeptic’s question, answered honestly, including the specific trip types where the honest answer is no.
Laundry on the Road: The Unglamorous Chapter — the mid-trip logistics carry-on-only quietly requires, and how to plan around them instead of reacting to them.
The point of reworking this page. None of those seven posts make the underlying case for carry-on-only on this kind of trip — they assume the decision is already settled and go straight to the specifics. This is the page for the “wait, why” that has to come before the “how, exactly.” Stated plainly: on a trip built around shared transport, hill towns, and moving somewhere new every few days, a bag that fits under a seat and rides comfortably on a back is not a minimalist flex. It’s the version of the trip that actually functions, checked against real airline limits, real budget-carrier fees, and real cobbled streets — not a packing philosophy borrowed wholesale from a different kind of travel. The specific numbers above will keep shifting as airlines revise their policies, which is exactly why the underlying habit matters more than any one figure: verify directly, every time, rather than trusting what a bag got away with last time. Still deciding whether the trade is worth it? Is a Carry-On Really Enough for Two Weeks? has the honest pros and cons. Already decided? The 5-4-3-2-1 Packing Rule, Tested for Two Weeks is the next stop.
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