After a 14-hour flight and two layovers, we landed on Sunday in Zagreb, Croatia. Here’s the thing about Europe on a Sunday – a lot of shit is closed. I’ve been burned by this many times. I respect it but it’s not fun when you are a silly American who needs a tampon.
It’s almost inevitable you’ll forget an item when packing for a two-week trip. As luck would have it, this trip it was tampons.
Let the panic sink in.
First, I didn’t even know where I was supposed to buy tampons. My first guess was a pharmacy. Closed. Local Supermarket. Closed. Convenience store. Closed. I asked the people at the front desk of our hotel. They didn’t have any tampons. They said we’d have to take a cab fifteen minutes outside of the city to go to a mall.
I found a few tampons tucked in a random pocket in my backpack. I decided to risk it. I woke up bright and early the next day. Luckily, our hotel was right next to a DM. It seemed similar to a Walgreens or Duane Reade.
I bought ALL the feminine products. Because that’s what you do after panic mode. I bought a 16 pack of super tampons, an 80 pack of regular tampons, pads and a million panty liners.
They had the usual American brands, but I picked Jessa. The Jessa brand looked fine and fairly cheap which is important because I was buying a million. The packaging appeared to be in German. After years of using tampons, I figured I got this covered. I didn’t even think about the applicator.
Jessa tampons are packaged in a little bit of plastic. No plastic applicator. No awful cardboard applicator. Literally nothing. In retrospect, this is clearly how they could fit 80 tampons in the box. This wasn’t exactly the kind of adventure I signed up for. You better believe I’ll pack a million tampons on our next trip. But sometimes you just forget to pack important shit and it sucks. Especially if it’s a Sunday in Europe.
Leave me a comment below with what important items you’ve forgotten to pack and how you dealt with it.