Freebies: Souvenirs to Take Home at No Cost to You

1. Drink Coasters

Many European bars will have coasters scattered throughout, just like we do in the states. While  I don’t suggest taking home an entire stack, grab one or two to take home with you, especially if they have the bar’s name on it. It’s a practical item to use when you’re home that is also a nice decorative souvenir on your coffee table to remind yourself of all the great places you got to visit during your study abroad trip. 

2. Earth

No, not the entire earth itself. Soil and rocks can fit extremely well into a small jar and make very  unique decorative pieces that will never go bad. If your family has descendants from another country that you visit, bringing home your parents or grandparents soil from a homeland is a wonderful gift that will cost you the price of the jar and the effort to fill it. Just be sure that wherever you take dirt, rocks, sand, or flowers/leaves from is allowed- national parks or preserved land probably is a no-go. Also be sure that if you are traveling by plane with those items at all, have them easily accessible to show security- they don’t look good under the scanning machines, and you’ll likely have to show them exactly what it is. 

3. Wristbands and Admission Tickets

Even if you aren’t a scrapbooker or Pinterest expert, hanging on to ticket stubs and admission passes or wristbands can be a great thing to look back on and flood your memory with the places you got to see, the people you experienced it with, and a lot of unexpected details you wouldn’t otherwise remember. Brochures can provide the same thing but with even more detail. These kind of things are classic memorabilia, so even though they may seem like a stack of papers you’re hoarding, they can be an awesome one-of-a-kind display of your travels during your study abroad journey.

4. Pictures

The beauty of the digital world is that today you can take thousands of pictures for free, so unless you’re using an old-school camera and paying for film, taking pictures is the cheapest (totally free) and most visually memorable way to bring home souvenirs. Take pictures of the streets you usually walk down, the restaurants and cafes that you visit most often; videos can do even more for your memory.  It will be a treasure to be able to “walk down” roads you took through videos in a year, five years, and 20 years. 

5. Handmade Crafts

Some countries are big on making crafts or pieces of art in a group setting where you can take home what you make. Find a nice cafe that has a painting night and create a piece of art that you can cherish forever. Putting something up on your walls or out on display in your home that you created in another country is such a cool conversation piece, but also a pretty elegant and artsy thing to have. It’s a huge moment of pride to show something you made by hand, so get to a pottery class, make some jewelry with local items, or hit the art studio and find your inner Van Gogh. 

Souvenirs are a very pricey industry, so don’t break the bank buying cheap and inauthentic things. Instead, access your artistic side and gather these free and nearly free items to bring home with you and you’ll have yourself a wonderful set of memories that are anything but a waste of money.