EP 10 - Why Do We Buy Souvenirs When We Travel?

Why do we bring souvenirs home from every trip? 🧳 A fridge magnet we didn’t need. A ceramic plate we definitely didn’t have room for, colorful patches for a denim jacket or postcards we will never send anyway. But maybe we’re not really buying things, maybe we’re buying a way to remember. Historian Valentin Groebner has explored our relationship with the things we choose to keep and the memories we attach to them. And the more I thought about it, the more I started wondering why we feel the need to bring physical pieces of places home with us in the first place. In this episode, I’m going down the rabbit hole of why we bring pieces of the places we visit back home and how objects can become little memory triggers years after a trip is over. But then I realized I do something completely different when I travel between Mexico and Germany. When I go to Mexico, I come back with my suitcase full of Mexican decorations from La Ciudadela because I want little pieces of where I come from in my German home. And when I go from Germany to Mexico, I bring my family cookies, candy and random supermarket things, not because they’re particularly special, but because they’re part of my everyday life here. Because sometimes I’m not bringing them a souvenir. I’m bringing them my Thursday. And maybe that’s what happens when you live far away from home: you start carrying pieces of different places, different versions of yourself, and different lives with you. So… are we collecting souvenirs, memories, or pieces of ourselves?