Once you’ve looked for the bare necessities, pack them and nothing else.
Having previously mentioned that my suitcase was large, nay, mountainous when I flew over to Vienna, I should perhaps explain that whilst I was exaggerating, I wasn’t exaggerating as much as I would have liked. I didn’t bother to weigh my case before I flew, as I never usually take that much and so I’ve never had to give much thought to the weight restrictions on hold baggage before. Admittedly there was one time when it turned out that my hand luggage was about 10kg, but that was because I didn’t want to put my books in my hold luggage in case they bashed about and in case I finished the other 3 novels I was taking before the end of the flight. The possibility of being left without reading material was by far the most worrying prospect of holidays for me as a child. I’d like to say that that’s not the case now, but it’s still a factor in my packing.
Which may have been one of the reasons that my luggage was on the larger side. The standard restrictions are 23kg. My case was 24.5kg. I also made the mistake of checking in my bag last, so when I saw the number on the scales, I was hurriedly trying to think of what I could slip into my hand luggage to balance out the weight. Whether because the person at the desk guessed or somehow knew that I was going to be in Vienna for a month, or for some other reason, I was lucky in that they decided not to charge me for the excess baggage.
Having mentioned this to my family, they kindly offered to take some things back with them when they left to try and get my suitcase back into the realm of what is sensible, especially seeing as I don’t have a bigger albeit younger brother to help me carry it up and down stairs on the way back. I ended up going through my suitcase a couple of times, becoming evermore severe about what I actually needed, and what I could do without for the next 4 weeks. Such things included the third 600+ page novel I’d brought with me (What? A month is a long time in reading terms!), as well as 4 of the 6 jumpers I’d brought with me (NB: the number of jumpers should be inversely proportional to the temperature in degrees centigrade. Ergo, if it’s 30ºC, you need 1, maybe 2. Not 6. Even if they are smart casual as the course dress code states.) I also ended up sending my raincoat home with me. Yes, despite arriving in a thunderstorm and having witnessed deluges since, I made the informed decision to send back my only item of waterproof clothing. Even if it is pouring with rain, chances are you’re not going to be standing out in it for very long if you have any say in the matter. I figured that if the worse came to the worse, I’d just have to find a café and have an Eiskaffee whilst waiting for the storm to pass. I also realised that most people just use umbrellas instead, because nobody wants to be putting on layers in 30ºC heat.
Seeing as I’ve talked about 30ºC several times now, I feel I ought to at least be a bit more realistic in my representations of Viennese weather. Yes, it was 30ºC several times, and it even got up to 33ºC at one point (I felt like I was in danger of melting, all Wicked-Witch-of-the-West style, although a bucket of water would actually have been a welcome gesture), but since the thunderstorm the weekend before last, it’s been a lot cooler. It’s still been 22ºC+ every day, so don’t start sending the pity party just yet. However, since I sent most of my jumpers home, I’ve been rather glad of the shirt-over-a-T-shirt combination and my courtesy university hoodie when the temperature drops in the evenings.
Another clothing-related practical note is washing. In Oxford, the college laundry rooms run off chip cards used to operate the payment machines, so I only have to worry about topping it up once a term or so. However, in the real world without such advanced if specific technology, such things are operated with loose change. But very specific change. So naturally it would be the day after I pay for my coffee with all of my change to get rid of some of it that I find out that the washing machines only accept €0,50 pieces, and that I need 4 of them. Cue panic buying of small items in the supermarket and begging for the change in €0,50 pieces, only to find out that the cashier I went to only had 1 left. What followed was then pleading with everyone I’d met at the academy if they had any such coins I could change. After much strategic purchasing and pleading, I managed to get together the correct combination of change to be able to have clean clothes again. This may not sound that drastic, but when you’re debating washing your clothes with Ariel Non-Bio by hand in your bathroom sink, you know that you’ve got less than 24 hours of clean clothes left. It’s fine, all is well now, I can stroll around Vienna safe in the knowledge that I smell like fabric softener and not like second-hand cigarette smoke and canteen dinners.
They say that mother is the necessity of invention, so once I’d actually managed to wash my clothes, I got creative with finding ways to dry them. This mainly involved covering every possible surface in my room with my laundry, as well as opening all cupboards and doors and draping things over them. I even ended up turning to using the door handle at one point. In Oxford, I usually have a large airer, and by large, I mean big enough to dry two washing machines’ worth of laundry at a time. Seriously, that thing is the envy of the corridor, if only at very specific moments.
In a bid to make sure that I don’t have the same problems of oversized luggage on the way back from Vienna, I’ve left my suitcase out in the middle of my room to act as a constant reminder. My immediate thought when I encounter the possibility of acquiring something is “how much does this weigh?” and “is it something I can use up or leave here at the end of the month?” The effect of this is that I’ve been very thrifty about buying anything that isn’t food, and I’ve even been thinking about what things I could leave behind when I return to the UK in a couple of weeks. Obviously some things are worth the hassle, but I’m not quite convinced that a snowglobe of St Stephen’s cathedral is worth the extra baggage charges.
TL;DR – DON’T TAKE SO MUCH.
In Search of Lost (Reading) Time 
The Tom I know is bound to buy some books (yes, in the plural!) so all I can suggest is coming back looking like the Michelin man (ie. wear all your clothes!) and using the case and your hand luggage for books… Remember to make your hand luggage look light when you carry it; I speak from the experience of having hand luggage which weighed as much as my whole luggage allowance on the return from my year abroad..!