Globetrotters October Travel Writing Prompt

What Travel Souvenirs Don’t Come in Cheap Plastic?

Bottlecaps from around the world and one way of reevaluating my impacts as a traveler

“Me puedes dar la tapa de la botella, por favor?”

That’s Spanish for “can you please give me the bottlecap?”, of the bottle that you just opened for me. I get the strangest looks sometimes from the server or the bartender when I ask that question in a foreign country. But that’s what I want to bring home when I travel, those are the souvenirs that I seek out.

They understand when I explain it to them, or at least they pretend they do.

I’ve noticed, since returning home a year ago to Vancouver, Canada after seven years abroad, a significant change in the way that beer is delivered in-store to the consumer. Until recently, it was still all in glass bottles. Now, you can barely find hide nor hair of them there and it’s all in cans instead.

Surely there are many good reasons for this. It might have something to do with global supply chains. I can probably be convinced that it’s more environmentally responsible, since glass requires tremendous heat and energy to produce and then transport. Cans, one assumes, do too, but maybe they are easier to recycle. Perhaps cans are more cost effective in terms of production as well. Maybe they maintain the freshness of the product longer. It could be argued that it’s more aesthetically pleasing to the purchaser. Any of these points seems like a good reason for the shift.

But for me, it’s a catastrophe.

I collect bottlecaps while traveling, you see, and I’ve amassed a collection nearing about a thousand different specimens of the things. When I’m on the road, my search for them borders on obsession and when I return home, I routinely make a little ceremony of welcoming the ten or twenty new caps that I got, to their new home and new friends.

I was motivated to write this by this month’s writing prompt in Globetrotters, as well as articles by two people I read closely who wrote about their own approach to their indulgences in souvenirs that they buy when they travel.

Erie Astin tells the story of her travels on the front of her fridge:

Linda Ng brings us her five favourites that she has collected along the way:

Michele Maize packed some souvenirs that got her into a little bit of trouble:

None of what I am about to say is meant as a criticism of them or of anyone for their choices while they travel, despite what this article’s title may indicate. It’s really just about what works for me. One assumes these all still have a place in their lives and homes and that they get some kind of regular use, even — or especially — if only to trigger happy memories. That’s what souvenirs are supposed to do.

If you love fridge magnets and shot glasses and they make you think about that time when, then by all means fill yer boots!

I’m no saint myself and under duress, I will admit to having purchased a few fridge magnets over the years and they still have pride of place on my kitchen appliances. But I really do my best to avoid impulse buys in the form of cheap plastic mass produced stuff from China, if you will pardon my French.

As a result, it was while traveling in Croatia in 2009 that I began hanging on to the tops of bottles of beer. Labels too, if they come off easily, depending on just the right combination of condensation and weakness of adhesive.

A bit of patience will serve you well in this endeavour also.

I don’t know why this began in Croatia, in particular. Perhaps it was the stark red boldness of the Karlovačko logo, staring back at me. It said, “look at me. I am the best thing going here.”

Since then, I’ve had to develop some guidelines to create some semblance of order and standards to this whole thing.

Exact doubles are not allowed and are unnecessary anyway. However, if they are from the same beer but the cap has been changed, then room is made for them. Or, if the same beer is brewed in different places, that is permitted. A Carlsberg cap looks different in Malawi than it does in Denmark.

It is best if I, or the person that I am with, have consumed the drink ourselves. That said, people giving you bottlecaps from their travels is a nice gesture, and so is not necessarily frowned upon, and certainly not banned altogether.

I do not have to have consumed the drink in its country of origin. I’ve never been to India, but I have had a Kingfisher or two in my time.

Soda caps have found their way in, but only when and if they are printed in different languages. Like the aforementioned Carlsberg, a Coke bottle cap from Mozambique is in Portuguese and one from the UAE is in Arabic.

Two separate collections can come together and cohabitate as one. Caution is advised however, as this could lead to a difficult discussion if things don’t work out.

It’s all pretty straightforward, in my mind at least. What counts and what makes its way in is along the same lines of deciding what the criteria are for “whether I’ve actually been in a particular country or not”. It’s all personal preference. And discipline. And honour.

They are reminders of a place that I once spent a moment or weeks or years in. They serve me as memory jogs. They serve as anticipatory devices too, when I look up what’s on offer in a place before I even go there. You know…so that I know what I am looking for.

That’s why there is little that is more disappointing than when a beer arrives with a plain cap. Where is the imagination, where is the branding opportunity? Almost as bad is a foil wrapper. In my experience, there is usually nothing underneath it.

I wish more beer manufacturers would put the city or country (or both) on their bottlecaps. It would make things so much easier and more interesting.

In some countries, in bars and restaurants, it is customary for a bottle to be brought to the table with the cap still on and opened there by the server. Proof of hygiene, one supposes. I like that best and I will ask them to leave the cap, and if not to see if it might still be on the bar where they opened it.

As I said, sometimes I get strange looks. Sometimes they ask why and I explain it to them and this might lead to a longer chit chat with a local, which can be its own reward.

On some caps, you can see the effort and creativity that went into telling a story on what probably amounts to 2 square centimetres. On some caps, you can see that no effort was involved. These are still deserving of a home. It’s not their fault.

Before anyone asks, no, these are not going to be turned into the top of a table. It’s only 1000 caps. Line up 50 by 20 caps and see how much of a table that actually covers. It’s basically two placemats.

I much prefer to keep them on a shelf in their large glass fruit bowl and every now and then pull out a handful and go through them one by one, remembering the trip that I got them on.

I do realize that these caps represent a drop in the bucket relative to the sheer deluge of bottles I’ve opened or have had opened on my behalf while traveling. How many caps have been thrown away as a result? I am not saving the environment here, but think for a second how many single-use metal caps go straight into the garbage every day around the world.

Surely, this can’t continue and this might be another reason that cans seem to be here to stay, at least in my part of the world.

Can the sea level of plastic tourist stuff we are willfully drowning ourselves in continue to rise? Maybe if we promise to reconsider our purchases, it’ll negate the need to buy a carbon offset of our flights and help mitigate our impacts. What do you think?