Souvenirs and sweet memories

What do you bring back from your travels for friends and family?

Jay recently came back from Eastern Europe and brought back some fun chocolates and candy bars for everyone in the office (which of course means mostly for Margie), and it got us thinking about souvenirs.

By very definition, souvenirs are little packable memories that you can bring back to remember your trip – where you went, what you saw.  Most of us keep small souvenirs to remember special trips, maybe in scrap books or photo albums.   

But they can be wonderful journeys for people who never made the trip.  Jay’s chocolate let’s all of us in the office (or those of us brave enough to ask Margie for a piece) share in a part of the fun of traveling to another country and imagine our joy in discovering new experiences or our surprise to find similarities across borders.

The Japanese call these kinds of souvenirs “omiyage,” but we just call them delicious.