Five cities, five days: my carry-on only business trip week with one trolley

The first mistake happens while packing, not while flying. A suit that spends five days folded flat in a cabin trolley looks, on Friday, precisely like a suit that spent five days folded flat in a cabin trolley.

Crease-free? Not a chance.

It's the fabric more than the folding technique, at least as far as I can tell. On The Capsule Suitcase, Andrea Zoellner points to finely spun wool or wool-polyester blends. They pack down smaller and come out with noticeably fewer creases than cotton or linen. Linen is probably the worst possible choice for a week like this, however good it looks on the hanger.

The second thing helped me more in Munich than the fabric did. A suit doesn't belong loose between shirts and charging cables. It belongs flat in its own cover, one that holds the shoulder and the lapel in shape and has a laptop compartment built in. In a taxi it just rides on top of the trolley.

Travando Anzugtasche mit 15" Laptopfach und Schultergurt - Kleidersack Anzug Tragetasche

Steam from the hotel shower? Helps a bit with the leftover creases. It's not magic.

Five days, five fresh shirts? Doesn't fit. Not next to a laptop, a charger, a wash bag and a second pair of shoes.

The fix is unglamorous, and it has been working for years for people who do this far more often than I do. Trang Le, a team lead at American Mobile Healthcare, travels for two-week stretches with one carry-on and one backpack, according to Business Travel Life. Instead of packing a fresh outfit for every single day, she leans on the laundry options at the hotel.

For me that meant a Tuesday evening in a Vienna hotel room, one shirt in the sink, hung overnight on the shower rail. It's annoying exactly once. After that it's just routine.

What I underestimated was drying time. A shirt that goes into the water late at night is still damp in the morning if the window stays shut. Sounds obvious. Still cost me the look I wanted for Wednesday.

Munich was a suit and a tie. Hamburg was rain, wind, and a meeting where nobody in the room was wearing a tie at all. Two climates, two dress codes. And I only had the one trolley.

The answer to that is old and it's called a capsule wardrobe. Two or three neutral base colours, one or two accent pieces, and a jacket that goes with everything. Every item combines with every other item, and nothing travels for a single day's use only. That one trick solves both problems at once, the weather and the dress code, and I think it's the only reason the week held together.

Then there's the layer that saves the most space in hand luggage because it never goes inside it. The coat you wear. Nobody counts that anywhere.

The real space hog, in my experience, was footwear. One pair on my feet, one pair in the trolley, and the bottom level is gone. Nothing more fits. Nothing more is needed either.

Thursday had the tightest connection of the week, and that's the first point where carry-on only genuinely pays for itself. No check-in desk, no waiting at the belt. I go straight to the security queue.

At German airports, a fast lane at security saves travellers roughly 25 minutes on average, and at Frankfurt Airport up to 41 minutes, according to airliners.de. On a day with two meetings and a flight wedged between them, those 41 minutes decide whether you arrive on time or embarrassingly late.

The second time sink is the trolley itself. If the laptop and the liquids come out in two seconds because they're sitting right on top, you don't end up at the scanner digging through your own week. Everything else is self-inflicted.

Friday afternoon in Zurich, phone at eight percent, boarding pass on the phone. You know the feeling.

This is where it gets interesting, in a way most packing lists haven't caught up with yet. Since 27 March 2026 a global power bank rule applies: a maximum of two units of up to 100 watt-hours each in your hand luggage. And as AmpCarry explains in detail, the Lufthansa Group goes further and bans passengers from using a power bank to charge anything during the flight at all.

That's the trap I almost walked right into. It's not the watt-hour limit that's the problem, that stays the same for every airline. It's a change of airline mid-week, because the Lufthansa Group additionally bans any charging during the flight. What was completely fine on Monday's flight can be forbidden by Friday, with the same device sitting in the same bag. We've written up what sits behind the Lufthansa power bank ban separately.

In practice it comes down to two things. Keep the power bank under the 100 Wh line, and charge on the ground rather than in the air. A 20,000 mAh unit works out at roughly 74 watt-hours at the usual 3.7 volt cell rating, comfortably under the limit, and something that size covers several full phone charges while still sliding into the side of a laptop bag.

Anker 325 Powerbank 20000mAh

Friday evening on the train home: one trolley, a suit that got aired out twice, and a shirt still damp in a plastic bag. It worked. Not elegantly, but it worked.

Would I do it again the same way? For five cities in five days, immediately. For two cities and three nights in one place I'd probably check a bag again, because at that point the sacrifice buys you nothing but frustration. Dyment's line still holds, though. Luggage that stays with you doesn't get lost.

What this week is explicitly not is a packing list. If that's what you're after, it lives in two other places. We wrote up the full five-day carry-on only practice check piece by piece, and how a suit and a laptop share one carry-on trolley is covered in the second practice check.