Are Souvenirs Worth Getting?

Souvenirs are collected by people to take a little something to keep with them in order to store memories or to give to a friend or family after you are back from a trip.  But are souvenirs really worth getting? We have multiple breaks at AISG. Our breaks are embedded into these months: September, October, December, February, April, June, and July. When asked if people get souvenirs the majority tend to say yes. There are so many factors that go into getting that one souvenir. What does it really mean to me? Where am I displaying it? What would it mean to the person I’m giving it to? These questions run in our minds after we buy the souvenir. Zooming out 5 years later, when your mom finds a souvenir lying around or stored away, long lost and forgotten. You finally find it, ‘ohh yeah I remember this, ah good times’, Or you might find yourself in the situation of ‘ahaha oh boy, things that take up storage’, therefore it can be said that souvenirs are both interesting and filling, this varies with different people and their personalities. When asking this year’s seniors, as we will soon be off to university, and be carrying things back and forth of what is most memorable to us, it is important to know that whatever it is that one is willing to take with them should be meaningful.

Olivia S, Nelly L, and Amanda DC, all agreed to have owned a souvenir. Each of them has different and unique factors to talk about when it comes to souvenirs. “I usually buy magnets because it looks pretty”, said Olivia. She makes sure to always make her friends buy souvenirs when they visit her hometown Sicily. This was quite surprising as people usually only think about places to show their friends around when they visit, but this unique approach of making your friends take a little part of your country with them is truly unique. It is certainly true when said that every country has their own personalized customs and that souvenirs reflect those cultures. Olivia specifies food, as “one of the cultural aspects she has seen that people tend to love, mini prototypes of food”. Souvenirs cannot be put into a single category, they also come in terms of what one decides to preserve for themselves, such as polaroids pictures and wrappers from gifts that people give you, or the concert tickets from the first show that you’ve ever been to. Yes, these count as souvenirs too.

So are souvenirs worth it? “I can carry a piece of that country with me forever and relinquish the memories and the good experience of my trip with that country. I used to get souvenirs for other people, but they don’t mean anything to other people, it all seems to be materialistic objects with no significance”, said Nelly. This happens to be true as well, as time goes by somethings tend to gain and lose importance. Everyone has that one special souvenir that they’ve kept close to them.  Nelly also mentioned, “the ones that I care about I keep in a box, a souvenir I got with a sticky note with the date when I got it and where I got it .” So where do some people keep their precious belongings?

Some tend to lock them up in their safe space, and some just leave them laying around in their room. Amanda has a scrapbook from Vietnam, her most favorite souvenir of all. “Every time I travel, my dad and I have a postcard collection and we tend to picket things from the historical side such as monuments, the Eiffel Tower and Statue of liberty”, said Amanda”.  She collects postcards because they are small and don’t take up much space. However, she can also see why people would not want to [get souvenirs], but that is why most are sold in airports at smaller sizes to avoid storage issues. So when asked if they are worthy she also mentioned, “of course they are, souvenirs you bought can have meaning or name of the place, keep track of where you’ve been. In the end, simple things like pictures are souvenirs too..!”

Overall, souvenirs are souvenirs, and people are people, each one their own kind, the unique kind, hence souvenirs are worth it to those that find significance and, not, to those who feel like it is just a space filler.