What physical reminders of your trips do you keep around?

Some travelers have giant world maps sprawled across their walls at home, with pins denoting all their travel “conquests.” Though there’s certainly nothing wrong with this, it’s never been my approach to remembering a trip. To my mind, it feels a bit too much like turning the world into a checklist to be “completed.”

Others keep a few photos displayed on their desks or walls to keep their trips fresh in their minds. Compared to the pins-on-a-map strategy, photographs offer the ability to remember people as well as destinations, and for that reason, I tend to favor them. But relatively small 4×6 photographs don’t exactly “pop” when they’re hung on a wall, and who’s got the time to blow-up their photos? And of course there are frames to get too. That’s why, although I have a few pictures displayed in my room, most of my best shots are arranged inside albums gathering dust.

Trip souvenirs can be excellent ways to incorporate the feel of a certain country into your home. Around my house, I’ve got rugs and wall hangings from Morocco, beer mugs from the Czech Republic, and a neatly-framed map of Poland (with, alas, no pins.) But since I like to travel light, I don’t usually bring many souvenirs home. And many of the ones I do are purchased at the airport with leftover foreign currency.

These displays are also troublesome because I don’t want to be someone who ostentatiously displays his wonderful trips for all visitors to admire. When visitors ask why I have a map of Poland on my wall, I always groan and mutter, “I got it when I was in Poland.” Then I always feel like adding, “But I didn’t hang it on my wall so you’d ask that question… Honest!”

The trick to bringing your trip back home is to try to create an effective, meaningful reminder of your trip without turning it into a showy display of your own worldliness. The closest I’ve come to this is by always keep my trip journals nearby, and leafing through them about once a month. Anyone else have suggestions for ways to bring the trip back home?