"Travel Souvenir" Contest: Show Me Your Favorite Souvenir and Earn 10 SBD's in Rewards
Hello my fellow steemians,
Here I am with a second Wacky Contest. I will admit that it took me way more time than I originally thought, but I wanted to come up with a different and COOL idea, so here I am :)
I've noticed that many steemians love to travel and post photos of their vacations. So, I was thinking to myself,
"Hey, if they love traveling, taking photos and devouring delicious local dishes, they probably love buying souvenirs as well."
After all, other than taking photos, a characteristic souvenir from a certain country, city or island, will always bring back good memories, no?
Without further ado, here are the RULES:
In order to be a qualified entrant in this contest you have to take the following very simple steps:
1. Post one photo of your favorite souvenir in the comment section of this post.
2. Give me a few information about it. Where? When? Why it is special to you? If you have a detailed background story to write about it, feel MORE THAN WELCOME to do so. After all, I am a writer myself. I may reward a "catchy story" instead of an impressive souvenir for all I know ;-)
Important Note
I will pick the TWO WINNERS THAT WILL SHARE 10 SBD's (5 EACH), based on the quality of the background story and the uniqueness of the souvenir. So, asking your friends voting for you in this contest is pointless really.
To get a clear idea of what I am asking, this would be my "involvement" to such contest:
I didn't even have to buy the specific souvenir, but instead I got it for free; well, if RUNNING YOUR ARSE OFF for 10 miles (16.5 km) is considered free.
I had a dream come true this past November – a dream I had as a child after watching the first Rocky film – when during the "Rocky Run," I ran in the same Streets of Philadelphia Rocky&Bruce did!!!
Now, show me YOUR souvenirs and share your stories with me :))))
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Great post ..Well done
I think the important thing is memories
The phrase from the book - this is what the losers say - Hahah
It was the year 2012 when after saving for a time with great effort, I made the decision to travel to Toronto, Canada to study English. I had never left my country Venezuela, but I ventured to live for 4 months on that wonderful opportunity in order to perfect the language and imbibe the Canadian culture. I was extremely nervous but excited - what was I going to do to communicate? - My English level was intermediate, however, I was very scared.
In May 2012, I arrived in this country and from the first moment I stepped on these lands, I was amazed and grateful to have had the opportunity to travel. I loved each of the streets of this city with its friendly and cheerful people. I was fascinated by observing such a multicultural country, where on the street you see Latins, Koreans, Chinese, Hindus, Philippine, people from all over the world and you do not see the racism that prevails in other countries.
I had the opportunity to live in the house of a Filipino family who treated me excellently, like a daughter, and could also know their culture. At the institute I met people from all over the world, it was very interesting to realize the similarities and differences of each culture and I became interested in knowing more of many countries throughout the world. All this and much more are the memories that come to my memory when observing this souvenir of the city of Toronto. Unfortunately, I had to leave in September 2012, however, I will never forget this experience.
I hope to come back some day…
I want to share this simple metalic box that to you may look dull, but to me is a sweet reminder of my carefree childhood years. I used to watch the specific show on a public tv channel and their sweet, melancholic figure has been carved in my brain as the depiction of innocence, a time that is not coming back.
Where I got it? It was bought from a toy store in Uppsala, during my first ever trip abroad. I remember walking past the shop and when my eye caught some Moomin figures in the window I got so excited that I burged in to see what other Moomin stuff was there. To be honest, I wanted to buy a glass snowball with Moomins inside (I fell in love with it), but I was afraid my luggage would already come overloaded so I chose this box that weighed a lot less.
It works as a connecting link between my childhood and my grown-up years, all dipped in sweet memories and feelings! :)
Okay I don't know if this counts as a souvenir, but here's the story first.
This card kind of sums up my 6 years at med school!! I left home to study abroad when I was merely 19 years old, and coming to a place like china....with the cultural shock....food.....language.....it seemed to me like I was just born and had to leave home to study medicine!!
Life was pretty difficult the first sem, not just for me, but for most of my classmates (all foreigners!!). And the difficulty of the major itself was only a minor source of all our difficulties :D
I was academically gifted and I never take credit for my grades. I always consider that this is a favor done to me from a divine level and i have no right to take credit for it or enjoy it all by myself and so I started on a journey....
I went upto any of my classmates who I thought was struggling with a topic (we were still pretty shy and didn't really start getting along...afterall most of us were young, away from home for the first time, interacting with people from entirely different cultural background, etc etc etc) and offered to help them out as much as I could...as much as my limited knowledge allowed, either by explaining myself or providing them with resources (my sis was a med student so I was never short of resources).
Very soon I started finding myself up at 2 am in the night studying for the exam next day coz I was busy explaining some other topic to someone else....or maybe after studying the whole night, at 5 a.m there's a knock on the door and I used up the three hours of sleep I had planned before the exam....But it all seemed worth it when after the exam my friend comes out, gives me a hug and shouts out in the middle of the hall, "If I pass physiology, it's all for this guy." Small memories like these soon filled up my album...these memories are what helped me hustle through 6 difficult years of med school.
The barriers we seemed to have at the beginning soon started to dissolve and I started making friends who have become such an important part of my life right now that it's hard to believe we'll be saying our final goodbyes very soon and walk our different paths.
And just before we part ways, for someone to come up to me with this to show appreciation and gratitude for what I've done is priceless.
This beautiful card brought back all these memories in a flash!! Every time I look at it, my med school flashes in front of my eyes. Of all the souvenirs I will be taking back from china, this will the most important....this will be the one that I will remember as something that defines me, reminds me of who I was at med school.....this will be the souvenir that will make me say "I'm proud of who I was, what I've become."
Love the idea of your contest 😉!!
If I would take part, seriously I don't know which one of my travel souvenirs I should put, since I have loads as you know!
Big thumbs up, good luck to the ones that will take place 🖒🖒🖒
Do gifts count? @opheliafu's gift to her followers at Amsterdam 2016 the first steemfest where we all got together. Nice contest man 😎
When I first read this contest, I thought that I would have a difficult time to single out that one absolute favorite souvenir from all my various travels.
But as I walked around my apartment, I realized that I have one souvenir that is displayed prominently in the very front of my apartment. It is the souvenir that I first see when I enter my apartment, and the very last one I see as I leave every day.
What are souvenirs anyway? The dictionary defines "souvenir" as: a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event.
This particular item I have had since 2010. And it reminds me of all three things: a person, a place, and an event.
The person: In the interest of protecting his identity and privacy, I shall call him Ares.
The place: Athens, Greece.
The event: The most romantic time in my life.
I met Ares in the summer of 2010 when I was visiting Athens, Greece for the first time. I was traveling alone, as I usually do, and was wandering the streets of Athens, hoping to not get lost. I had somehow found my way to Monastiraki and was eager to visit a famous souvlaki shop that had been recommended to me when I passed by a lone figure sitting in an outdoor cafe. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. I gathered my courage to approach this cool, mysterious stranger, and he rewarded me with an invitation to sit with him and drink a cool and refreshing frappe. That was the start of a beautiful and romantic love story.
Ares was a local who lived in the beautiful neighborhood of Kolonaki. He had a rooftop apartment that overlooked the city streets of Athens. We spent the days as tourists, visiting museums and ancient ruins, and the nights, we would roam Athens' colorful and lively streets and kiss in gold-lit alleys. Sometimes, we would sit on his rooftop, where we could see Lykavittos Hill on one side, and the Acropolis on the other, and we would daydream about one day living together in this beautiful city. Of course, we both knew that I was merely a tourist, and he was a local, with deep roots and a life there in Greece, but for the moments that we were together, we lived only in the present and loved each other as only lovers do when they know that their time together would soon come to an end.
I had over a thousand photos of my time in Greece with Ares. As fate would have it, my external hard drive broke, and I have lost every piece of hard evidence of my time with him. I cried for months. Sometimes, I still cry for all those lost photos.
All I have left are my memories, and of course, the love and affection that I still have in my heart for him. But he gave me a gift, and it is one of the few concrete souvenirs that I have that is a reminder of him.
It is a framed depiction of the famous oil canvas painting by the French artist, Jacques-Louis David, of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at The Battle of Thermopylae.
From my trip to Iceland. It's a yuleman. Yulemen are figures from Icelandic folklore, portrayed as being mischievous pranksters, but who have in modern times also been depicted as taking on a more benevolent role similar to Santa Claus. Their number has varied over time, but currently there are considered to be thirteen. They put rewards or punishments into shoes placed by children on window sills during the last thirteen nights before Yule (Christmas). Every night, one Yuletide lad visits each child, leaving gifts or rotting potatoes, depending on the child’s behaviour throughout the year. Amazing contest by the way!!!
hello,this is my souvenir from Ziria Skyrace 2014... Why is so special for me? you can read my story here
thanks a lot for this lovely contest!
Thank you for hosting this interesting contest @tkappa! I am happy to participate in it. Here is the photo:
These are traditional Mexican painted ceramic skulls (known as calaveras in Spanish) and they are literally everywhere in Mexico where I live now. I am sure they make a great souvenir for fans of creepy stuff but honestly, I haven’t dared to get myself one yet :D I would love to take something really typical of Mexico with me but still, being a Central European, the idea of having a colorful skull staring at me from my desk is a bit uncomfortable. However, I still have some time before I go back to Europe so maybe I will get one eventually. Will let you know! :D