Photo: Rolf Potts
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Rolf Potts
Tue May 9, 3:33 PM ET
Here's a curious trivia tidbit from U.S. history: In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams took leave from their Europe-based diplomatic duties and traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the home of William Shakespeare. Not much was recorded of the occasion, but one fact of their pilgrimage to the Bard's birthplace stands out: At some point during the tour, the two American statesmen brandished pocketknives, carved a few slivers from a wooden chair alleged to have been Shakespeare's, and spirited them home as souvenirs.
In retrospect, it's easy to look back on this incident and conclude that — in terms of travel protocol, at least — Jefferson and Adams were complete knuckleheads. The thing is, I haven't seen any evidence to prove that, as world-wandering travelers, our quest for souvenirs has become any more logical or dignified in the last 220 years.
I recently traveled to Key West, where a popular section of Duval Street is crowded with souvenir boutiques. In a certain sense, this stretch of Duval felt a tad anachronistic, since — in the age of online shopping — you don't have to travel to Key West to load up on painted seashells and exotic cigars. What struck me more, however, was not the items typically associated with Florida, but the bizarre overabundance of T-shirts emblazoned with rude messages.
It seems ridiculous that anyone would travel to Key West and buy a T-shirt that has nothing whatsoever to do with south Florida ("I'm not a bitch, I'm 'Miss Bitch' to you"). Still, bringing home a tacky keepsake from Key West can serve as a sort of travel credential — an existential referent that proves you went to south Florida and got drunk enough to exercise bad judgment. Similarly, for Jefferson and Adams, those Stratfordian wood-shavings were tangible proof that they had journeyed across England and touched a chair that had, presumably, once seated Shakespeare.
Indeed, in most cases it would appear that souvenir hunting is not a meaningful examination of place so much as it is a litmus test of our own whims and preconceptions as travelers. In Egypt, for example, generations of tourists have obsessively sought relics that remind them of the Pharaonic landscape they've seen in books and movies. Hence, all the major Egyptian tourist sites do a steady trade in fake papyrus, Great Pyramid paperweights, and alabaster Nefertiti statues — none of which would be found in the home of any self-respecting Egyptian. Similarly, in Calcutta's New Market, an unspoken caste system exists between Indian shoppers and souvenir-seeking tourists. The travelers instinctively gravitate toward boutiques that sell carved elephant figurines and decorative jars of saffron, while the Indians shop for rubber bathmats, stainless steel pans, and digital calculators. Buying an electric blender might be more representative of day-to-day Calcutta life than buying Kashmiri silk, although, admittedly, a blender would not look as good in your living room.
It may be tempting to blame this discrepancy on modern misconceptions, but the tourist quest for souvenirs has always been somewhat skewed. In ancient Anatolia, locals hawked supposed Trojan War relics to credulous Greek travelers, and excavations in Italy have suggested that ancient Romans had a penchant for cheap glass vials painted with pictures of contemporary tourist attractions (none of these have been proven to be snow-globes, to my knowledge, but it's easy to draw a parallel). In medieval times, Christian pilgrims wandering the Holy Land proved to be among the most gullible relic-hunters in human history, as they carted home enough crowns of thorns, Holy Grails, and apostle-femurs to stock a macabre, New Testament-themed Wal-Mart.
If any world culture deserves mention for its souvenir idiosyncrasies, however, it is the Japanese, who have long considered the giving of gifts to be an essential social ritual. Since taking a leisured journey carries a cultural sense of shame at leaving one's home duties, Japanese travelers reflexively seek out omiyage — small gifts that will be presented as an act of respect to the family members and coworkers they left behind. So common is this practice that some Japanese airports stock souvenirs from around the world in an effort to save travelers the hassle of finding them in their actual destinations. Hence, a Japanese girl's bedroom might feature a Mickey Mouse clock, a miniature Eiffel Tower, and a carved Balinese frog mask representing her father's trips to Florida, Paris, and Indonesia — all purchased at Narita Airport.
Like so many tourists before me, I, too, have been known to display weakness in the face of Peruvian weavings, Latvian amber, and Korean lacquer-ware.
But whenever I stroll into my office and gaze at my Mongolian masks and Syrian worry-beads, I find that they don't evoke my Asian travel memories quite so effectively as a beat-up, navy-blue "Bruin Track & Field" t-shirt I wore in both countries.
Strange as this may seem, it makes perfect sense: When I bought the masks and the worry-beads, I was shopping — but when I wore the t-shirt I was hiking across the steppes beyond Ulan Bator, or exploring the mountaintop monasteries outside of Damascus.
Indeed, as novelist Anatole France once noted, I'd wager that "it is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks."
In Stratford-upon-Avon, at least, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams might have done well to heed this advice.
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Tip sheet
"Souvenir strategies that can reduce the knucklehead factor"
1) Don't confine the notion of what a souvenir is.
Souvenir boutiques will be found in abundance in any major tourist area, but that doesn't mean you must confine your souvenir-hunt to specialty shops. Any token of your trip — from restaurant place mats to pressed leaves to local candy — can serve as a personal keepsake. If seeking gifts for loved ones at home, check department stores and supermarkets before you hit the souvenir shop — odds are you'll find something cheaper (and just as authentic) in these types of places.
2) Save souvenir shopping until the end of the journey.
Let a souvenir be a souvenir — a keepsake of experience — and don't go off shopping for knickknacks before you've had some real travel adventures. Not only will this give you a social context for your destination before you start commemorating it with collectibles, but it will also save you the hassle of dragging this new found loot around with you as your journey progresses. An added bonus is that, as a shopper, you will have a better sense for the price and quality of your souvenirs once you've traveled and made some comparisons.
3) The experience is more important than the keepsake.
In the end, shopping anywhere is still just shopping. Don't let the hunt for souvenirs get in the way of amazing travel experiences.
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