Traveling with broken socks – is that necessary?

Shoes on, shoes off. This often happens when travelling, on many occasions you have to take off your shoes on the go. So it's a good idea to take care of your socks, i.e. that they don't have holes and aren't too dirty. If you want to be on the safe side and avoid embarrassing situations, you should have spare socks with you, light cashmere socks or practical cheap pairs that are available in packs of ten everywhere.

A frequent sock trap is the security check at the airport, where the shoe scanner beeps or you are asked to have your shoes x-rayed. After all, the majority of travelers are aware of this problem: According to a survey by the British tour operator Holidaysplease, 64 percent of holidaymakers are meticulous about wearing good socks at security checks and on the flight.

Nevertheless, unfortunately, the impression arises again and again that precisely those 36 percent who don't give a damn about their socks are always standing in front of you at the security checkpoint. It's amazing how often fist-thick holes appear in the socks, mostly on the heel or big toes, often even on both feet. Is it carelessness, haste, ignorance, or stinginess that causes sufferers to wear their stockings on until they fall apart?

Interestingly, it is mainly older, well-groomed fellow passengers who tend to neglect their socks. This was the result of a Europe-wide survey by the Swiss sock manufacturer Blacksocks: The older people are, the less often they put on decent stockings. Unfortunately, great-grandma's wooden darning egg has gone out of fashion, nowadays holes are no longer darned, even in good stockings.

After security, i.e. on board, ignoring socks sometimes becomes an olfactory problem, especially on long-haul flights: Who hasn’t had the people seated next to you who take off their shoes shortly after take-off and mist the entire row of seats with the smell of their cheese feet? If the dirty socks have holes, the odor nuisance is even greater. Here one wishes to go back to the times when all airlines, even in economy class, generously distributed flight socks to slip on.

At the travel destination, the sock dilemma often continues. In the Far East, especially in fastidious Japan, you have to walk around in socks all the time, in restaurants, in traditional hotels, in temples. People also take off their shoes on private visits to Turkey, also in Poland, even in Sweden: There it is considered impertinent to enter the host's apartment with shoes, they are taken off in front of the front door.

Even celebrities get embarrassed like that. American Middle East expert Paul Wolfowitz delivered such a memorable sock performance in Turkey a long time ago. When he took off his shoes to visit the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, then in his capacity as World Bank President, large holes in his socks were revealed. The close-up promptly landed on the front page of the newspaper "Hürriyet". The Association of Turkish Socks Manufacturers then sent him twelve pairs of new socks to the hotel. Nothing beats spare socks when travelling.