Let's all solemnly welcome a new family member: my new orange travel backpack! 

I admit, a lot has to happen that I am writing an article about a backpack... and damn it, A LOT DID HAPPEN! In the next few months, in a complete foreign country, I will develop a highly emotional relationship with this object, which is so much more than just an object - it is my travel companion, my confidant, my protector of everything that is dear to me. I will touch it at every place of its being, I will know every corner of its body inside and out, absorb and accept its smell, I will become one with its weight on my hips on hot, long hikes and my sweat will flow into its pores and its colors into my skin.

I will cry when my backpack suffers injuries on our adventures and lovingly take care of its healing and make sure that it is always well! After our return to our homeland, we will look at each other in silence, and we will understand each other without words. What we are going to experience together, we will share with each other forever. This connection will last a lifetime. 

So, in my ears, this sounds very much like a new family member.

The following is the case: For 28 hours, I now have been critically examining this backpack from the corner of my eyes, which a cheerful Amazon messenger carried up to my apartment yesterday. After I opened the huge parcel, it now stands leaning against my orange sofa in an exposed place and every time I pass by, I look at it suspiciously. I'm trying to find out if I like this travel backpack or not.

Should I tolerate it and choose it for this extraordinarily important mission in my life? Does it have what it takes? Maybe I should send it back to its manufacturer and choose another model, a model with fewer cords and loops and less complicated openings on the top and all these hard-to-close lid loops?

Maybe I will soon be annoyed by its impractical handling and that it is not big enough or on the contrary, that it is not small enough and that I had not noticed this before and that I only will find out about all of this on the other side of the globe and then continue to be annoyed that I was so foolishly blinded by its pretty orange color and its beguiling smile and then I will totally go crazy because I realize that I was completely mistaken about it and it will cause me huge troubles on my trip! That would be the biggest disaster!! I can't believe what an enormous responsibility lies on choosing the right travel backpack!

I've just been taking a deep breath 3 times. 

I am deciding to touch the backpack and find out that its material feels good. Surely it is just as afraid of me as I am of it. And we both just want to spend a good time together. And we like each other, because I love orange and it loves adventures! Okey, this is going to work out with the two of us. I have made a decision. The backpack will stay. I'll take it with me on my journey. Hooray, this will be a covenant for life!