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Do you collect souvenirs? Or "youvenirs?"
Upon returning from many trips abroad, I find I am unable to part with what many would consider the "garbage" that accumulates during your travels. I'm not talking about banana peels or tissues - more like readily disposable items such as mass transit tickets, nightclub flyers and entrance passes to monuments.For example, I have a used subway ticket from Stockholm that I like to keep in my messenger bag. Or there's the pack of playing cards I picked up in Buenos Aires. Each item is relatively mundane and not really worth displaying, yet it holds a highly personal story.
Every time I stumble upon these items again during my day-to-day life, it causes me to pause for a moment, remembering where the item came from and how I acquired it. For instance, I remember the 20 random minutes I spent in the crowded Stockholm subway station office trying to buy the tickets pictured above. Or that rainy day in Buenos Aires where we had nothing to do and decided to play poker, wandering around for about an hour in search of cards and trying to explain the concept of "playing cards" to local store owners in Spanish.
What do you do with these items? The more ambitious put them in scrapbooks, but I like to think of these disposable travel items as something altogether different - as "youvenirs." What is a youvenir you might ask? For me, it's any highly personal travel memento with little monetary value - that fleeting item that you've managed to hold onto because of a memorable experience or highly personal anecdote.
It's for this reason that a youvenir is fundamentally different than a souvenir. Souvenirs are items you purchased with the intention of remembering and commemorating your trip - that beautiful colored glass bottle, an embroided sweatshirt that says "San Francisco" or a jar of Spanish olives you bought in Madrid. I find myself collecting fewer and fewer souvenirs these days - there's something about artificially buying an item just to remind me of a place that rings false. But a youvenir on the other hand is grounded in my personal experiences. As artists like Marcel Duchamp or Robert Rauschenberg have demonstrated, there is something profoundly interesting about everyday objects - something mundane and disposable yet incredibly meaningful depending on your personal context and experience with it.
I like to think that the more each of us travel, the less we acquire souvenirs so we can "brag" or give gifts to our friends and instead begin collecting youvenirs - items that have little monetary value but speak specifically to the unique emotions and experiences each of us attaches to travel.
What do you think about the concept of youvenirs? Do you have any memorable items you've acquired that would qualfiy? Click below to see our gallery of examples of "youvenirs" and leave some comments about your own favorite youvenirs below.
Gallery: Youvenirs
Filed under: Stories
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
thiefhunter Feb 20th 2009 11:02AM
As a physical manifestation of memories, souvenirs are best described in a song by the Tiger Lillies. Read about the song and hear it here: http://bobarno.com/thiefhunters/2008/03/souvenirs/
Jeremy Kressmann Feb 20th 2009 11:09AM
Hey thiefhunter, I like the link and the song. The concept of souvenirs I'm suggesting here based on memory and experiences seems similar.
It also reminded me of Tom Waits. He seems to have a similar knack for storytelling about strange faraway places in song.
Pat Feb 20th 2009 11:23AM
I had no idea such items had a name. "Youvenirs" seems to hit it on the head... thanks!!
These are the sorts of things I save from every trip. Even old receipts, cocktail napkins and cardboard coasters (if logo-ed) from great meals/nights out seem to make great "youvenirs" for me. Ticket stubs are a no-brainer. I've got pens and notepad paper from hotel desks, subway tickets, Canadian change, business cards, etc that all have meaningful stories too.
A guy lambasted me once for filling out a scorecard at a MLB game I was attending while traveling, wondering how a grown man could bother himself with something so meaningless. I only ever do it when visiting a ballpark for the first time. I think the "youvenirs" concept works here too -- blank scorecards typically cost about $1, they ultimately are fairly useless, but you fill them out yourself which provides a strong, personalized link between you and the experience. IMHO, they beat the hell out of overpriced official team merchandise.
Jeremy Kressmann Feb 20th 2009 11:35AM
Hey Pat - thanks for the feedback. I'm glad that you like the concept!
MLB scorecards sound like a great example of a "youvenir" - and for baseball fans, what better way to remember your particular experience of the game?
Emland Feb 20th 2009 11:41AM
After our trip to Paris I took the metro map and used it as a background and glued our metro, Louvre. L'Eiffel and water taxi tickets to it then framed it.
I also have a collage mat in a frame with tickets and stuff I pick up while we are out and about. I sprinkle in snapshots and write below what we were doing. It doesn't make for a formal presentation, but it reinforces the good memories.
I was just sorting out my purse this week and found our tickets from Natural Bridge, VA that we visited last summer. I'm a pack rat!
Dean Roskell Feb 20th 2009 12:00PM
I'm so glad I'm not alone.
Freaks of the world unite.
I've got bags of the things, which is odd in some ways as I own little in the way of possessions.
One day though I'll compile them into a book along with little entries about them. One day...
Janelle Feb 20th 2009 12:01PM
Love this! Finally a name for the detritus that floats through my pockets, bags, desk (yes, my desk is a hording place for this) and dresser. I keep saying I'll scrapbook them all away, but perhaps a big collage of sorts is really in order. Nice idea Emland.
Patricia Feb 20th 2009 12:09PM
Two years after visiting Egypt I still have a couple of ticket stubs from the Pyramids, Cairo Museum and the Valley of the Kings in one of the pockets of my packsac that I use daily. Sometimes they float up when I grab my checkbook from that pocket and a little smile comes over me.
Vera Marie Badertscher Mar 12th 2009 4:41PM
Great words invention. I love the colorful museum tickets that you get in some countries. Greece's archaeological sites give tickets that I could not imagine throwing away.
I also save the keycards of hotels when the hotel bothers to put a photo or log that uniquely represents the hotel.
What do I do with all this stuff? Varies. Sometimes it makes it into a photo album, sometimes just in a box with maps and other bigger reminders of the trip. Wish I had the inclination to make artistic collages, but then, I'd run out of wall space with all my youvenirs.
Lara Feb 20th 2009 8:48PM
I am one of those who scrapbook these mementos. Love the moniker "youvenir" - for me it's usually ticket stubs, programs from museums or monuments, the plastic wristband from a day at the amusement park, a piece of confetti that rained down on me at a concert, etc.
I do still buy the occasional postcard to scrapbook too, but only if my digital pics aren't quite capturing the sights the way I want to remember them.
Jamie Rhein Feb 20th 2009 12:37PM
One of the ways my husband wooded me was a scrapbook he made with all the youveniers he collected when we first started dating. Maybe these are "wevenirs"?
Neat post, Jeremy I liked seeing your stuff, particularly that odd yellow thing that you have held onto.
Graham's Travel Blog Feb 20th 2009 12:58PM
I am a collector of youvenirs. They usually end up in my pockets or shoved into my travel journal. I have quite a foreign coin collection, many of them have stories to go along with them.
I used to collect clean airplane sick bags. Many of them I tried to snag had gum in them. Imagine that, reaching for a vomit bag and it's stuck together with gum, gross.
Jennine Feb 20th 2009 1:28PM
I definitely collect "youvenirs." I have a whole tote of them. I had the intention of scrapbooking them, but have not done it yet. (And probably won't due to the volume I have collected from my various trips). I think they are fun reminders of what you've done and where you've been. Great post!
LameVoices Feb 20th 2009 1:48PM
Forget it! I always keep everything from when I go on trips! I'm sure in my boxes of "youveniers" you'll even find luggage labels from various airports! Crazy huh? I don't think so!
BB Feb 20th 2009 2:19PM
"Youveniers" for sure! Event or museum stubs and airline tickets make good bookmarks -- you can laminate them to make them last longer. My favorite "youvenier" is an scortched American nickel I found on a motu off the island of Tahiti several years back -- I made it into a necklace and still consider it a good luck charm since it was minted in 1942. (42 -- the answer to life, the universe and everything!)
Marissa Feb 20th 2009 2:47PM
I'm know for keeping all kinds of little stuff like ticket stubs and brochures---most of it makes it into my trip photo albums and scrapbooks, but a lucky few like the Stockholm ticket you describe stay in permanent homes like a certain purse inside a zippered compartment, and when I come upon it again every few months or weeks or whatever, it's nice to be reminded of a good time. I have one scrap of paper that's been inside a certain bag for upwards of six years, and I smile every time I notice it. I like "youvenier" to describe, too!
www.travelmuse.com
Will Feb 21st 2009 10:53PM
I love this article, and I think it's so cool to see that other people are doing the same thing I've been doing (something I thought other's might find to be lame and unimportant, but yet extremely sentimental and fun to me). I often take random impromptu jaunts off to anywhere, and I generally dont carry much more than a change of clothes, so "youvenirs" became extremely important to me. Tube day passes from London, a door key from a unique hotel in Phoenix, a Jamaican bracelet given to me by a kid I played soccer with in Sao Paulo, numerous boarding passes. I never put them away, they're always things I use on a regular basis (bookmarks, mostly) so I'm constantly surrounded by memories.
RaraAvis Feb 22nd 2009 2:10AM
I'm with you, Will. I mostly use my youvenirs as bookmarks. Most unusual? I still have an empty cigarette pack I brought back from Sao Paulo fifteen years ago. They were really good cigarettes. Too bad I don't smoke anymore...
Barak Feb 22nd 2009 6:40PM
My wife and I have been collecting stuff like this for about 25 years.. We put all those small items in several old "Printer's Drawers" and hung them on the wall. I like the term "youveniers"... Not all of them are momentos from trips or "events", some of them are just champagne corks or small shells we picked up while taking a walk on the beach, but they all have meaning to only us. It's a chore to dust them, but even when we do, it reminds us of the moments we shared. Thanks for the new "term" for it!