Travel and Shopping–Silver Winner: Souveniraholic
By Anke Snow
Hello, my name is Anke, and I’m a souveniraholic.
I am not exactly sure how I came to realize this. Maybe it had something to do with a general dissatisfaction I felt about my vacations, as if I hadn’t gotten the most out of them. But why hadn’t I?
On a six-week trip to France in 2004, I spent hours walking the narrow cobbled streets of Aix-en-Provence where we rented an apartment on the top floor of a five-story seventeenth-century house. On the streets below, scattered among the cafés, bakeries, butcher shops, and specialty food shops selling foie gras and pungent cheeses, were clothing boutiques, gift shops and antique stores. Every time I left the apartment, beautiful merchandise called to me from ornate window displays. How could I concentrate on Cezanne’s studio when all I could think about was the necklace in the window at the jewelry shop on Rue Aude?
I eventually purchased that necklace, and a silk dress from the Saturday market, a plush chicken, a cute little top from a trendy clothing boutique, two prints from an antique flea market, a hat from the local history museum, a copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – in French, as well as keepsakes for friends and family back home. We had also taken a four-day side trip to Venice, and there I bought a lamp! I know I’m forgetting some items.
I remember that vacation with undertones of tension and bitterness. Certainly, there were moments unrelated to shopping that I recall with fondness: The time we hiked Mont Saint Victoire. When we visited the bird sanctuary in the Camargues. Picnic lunches in the park. Sitting in our little kitchen overlooking the Place des Trois Ormeaux, toasting with a rosé, munching a lamb chop, or enjoying a café et croissant. But I am angry with myself for not having enjoyed more moments like that when I could have simply reached out and plucked them like so many overripe plums.
But it wasn’t the first time. I’ve done the same thing just about everywhere else I’ve visited. I have beautiful sepia prints of Hawaiian dancers. In Salzburg, I bought a swimsuit in January. The Dominican Republic is known for its natural abundance of amber and a semi-precious turquoise-colored stone called larimar. Naturally, I bought jewelry there. Shot glasses with little alligators hanging onto the sides are mementos from Hilton Head Island. From Chincoteague Island in Virginia, I came home with two t-shirts and two wood carvings of ducks from the local waterfowl museum. In Botswana, t-shirts, carvings, baskets and jewelry. In a Kenyan curio shop, I found a shawl dyed in a rich red with the pigment derived from the larvae of an insect that lays its eggs on a cactus. Seriously, how could I pass that up?
These souvenirs represent only a sampling of my obsession to commemorate my travels. The moment I set foot on foreign soil, I look for things to buy that will remind me of the time I spent there. I put so much mental and physical energy into this endeavor that shopping becomes the vacation in my memory. And the realization depresses me. Had I not been so intent on remembering a trip before it had even begun, I might have had a more meaningful cultural experience. A souvenir means nothing if it has no memories to evoke.
One year, I went on a different sort of trip. It was my third trip to Africa, to Tanzania this time, and my itinerary took me straight from the airport in Arusha to a small guesthouse on the outskirts of town. I had one day to relax and explore the town before we would set off into the African bush, but this day was spent recuperating from a minor bout of food poisoning acquired en route from Amsterdam.
My two previous African adventures had provided me with regular exposure to civilization and therefore places to shop. I was always able to get my fix. If I didn’t find something in one place, I knew there would be another opportunity soon. But this time, we headed straight to a campsite on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater with nothing but pit toilets and a cooking enclosure.
Over the next eight days, I hiked through Maasai lands, fields and jungles, from campsite to campsite. I descended into an impossibly green crater where an undulating mass of thousands of shell-pink flamingos rimmed a turquoise lake. I scaled an active volcano and entered its lunar cradle as the living mountain breathed and groaned. At night, as creatures rustled and snarfed in the brush outside, I huddled in the center of my tent, waking in the morning to find hyena and buffalo spoor close by.
The intoxicating landscape, the wildlife, the daily physical exertion, these things captured my complete attention. If I could have, I would have taken home the earth, the sky and the animals as my souvenirs. But all I could do was collect volcanic stones from the landscape and take pictures. I had no thoughts of shopping, and I can vividly recall every moment with a deep satisfaction.
Ten days later, however, I returned to Arusha to begin the second leg of my holiday back in civilization - I caught a flight to the island of Zanzibar off the Tanzanian coast. Here, in this tropical tourist mecca, touts and merchants mounted incessant assaults upon my pocketbook, and being the junkie I am, I didn’t resist. In the ancient trading port of Stone Town, I found a wonderful map of Tanzania that matched the one I had of Kenya. It was the one souvenir I had actually intended to look for when I was planning my trip several months earlier. But in the end, I had done a lot more shopping: a silver crocodile pendant, a book of Zanzibar children’s tales, a CD, and myriad knick knacks intended as gifts.
I had become acutely aware of my souveniraholicism, and I didn’t like it because I saw how it was spoiling my memories. Maybe, I thought, my next trip could give me another chance to change my ways. For eight days, I cruised around the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. The yacht was small, holding only sixteen passengers plus a crew of about eight. We spent our days swimming, snorkeling and exploring the islands. At night, the yacht churned and bounced its way to the next island, sometimes traveling full speed all night long.
Just like in the African bush, there were no shops. I was out on a yacht, and there was nothing to buy, no mementos to be had. I couldn’t even collect souvenir rocks from the islands to place on the mantel next to the curiously marbled stones I picked up from the slopes of Mont Saint Victoire in southern France. Sand from a beach in the Dominican Republic sits in a green glass bottle on a shelf at home. Smooth flat pebbles from Shelter Cove in California decorate my cactus bed. Sierra Nevada quartz, Maui sea shells and pieces of bleached coral from a parking lot near the Florida Everglades fill a glass jar that I use as a bookend.
But before we were allowed to set foot on our first beach in the Galapagos, our guides lectured us about nature’s souvenirs. It is illegal to take any organic material from the islands – not a pinch of sand, not a pebble of lava, not a fluff of boobie down, not a mangrove leaf, not even lizard shit. (Although I did snap a photo of a lizard eating shit! Ha!)
Maybe the pictures would be enough. I didn’t want to end up like the woman in our guide’s story who tried to smuggle some coral off the island. She was busted, missed her flight home, and had to pay a three-thousand dollar fine. At least I’d had time to do a little shopping in Quito the day before…two alpaca sweaters and some slippers.
Soon, the enchanted isles, as early explorers called them, made me forget about souvenirs. What I remember now is the water, clear and murky all at once, with illusory blue ribbons of ink twisting in beams of sunlight just below the surface. Storm Petrels danced on gentle glassy swells like butterflies, luring small prey with their tiny webbed feet. Fiery orange rocks streaked with the bright white guano of sea birds seemed to float like giant floes of ice. Green sea turtles grazed on the rocks beneath the surf, sea lions whooshed noiselessly by, a giant manta ray flew up from the deep and belly-flopped back into the sea. We lounged under the equatorial sun on sugary sand as the mockingbirds begged for water.
And then we landed. We landed on the shore of Isla Santa Cruz, one of the Galapagos’ populated islands, to see lava tunnels, sink holes and Lonesome George, the last known remaining tortoise of his species. Naturally, where tourists go, souvenir shops sprout up like spring shoots. A little voice inside of me shouted Hurray! But then there was another voice, a softer, more distant one that said, Oh no, not more stuff. You don’t need anymore stuff. True, I said to the voice, I have the sweaters from Quito, but nothing from the Galapagos. I have to have something from the Galapagos. The soft voice died away as our group from the yacht fanned out into the seaside stores. I had to join them. I had been clean for eight days. I thought had been cured. But by the time my shopping seizure had ended, I was the proud possessor of two pendants, two tank tops, a t-shirt and stuff for my friends. When we were all done shopping, we met back at a café by the dock. Sitting there with my purchases, I felt as though I had eaten a whole box of doughnuts – yummy while I was doing it, but piggish and nauseated afterwards.
As I write, I haven’t been on a vacation since the Galapagos Islands. Time has allowed me to ruminate over this compulsion of mine, and I wonder how I will react when I once again unleash myself onto the world. I would like to believe I have changed, but history tells me I have not learned to resist the shiny, pretty things. I’m afraid I will be as unruly as ever.
In a few weeks, I’m taking my first trip to New York City. I’ll visit Times Square, the Village, Central Park and the Met. I want to walk down Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and visit Tiffany’s. I have quite possibly made one of the worst destination selections for my first foray back into tourist life after admitting my addiction. Can one go to New York without shopping? I doubt it. But my realization is like a nicotine patch, and perhaps it will help me to limit myself to only one souvenir.
