Whenever I visit a new country, I insist upon doing two things. The first is trying some traditional, local cuisine, such as a pizza Napoletana from Italy or some stuffed peppers from Greece. The second - and probably the more important - thing on my to-do list whenever I step on new foreign soil, is to buy a book. Specifically, a book that I can in some way link back to the trip, or at least to the specific time in my life when I was on said trip. This is basically the only souvenir I purchase for myself, and I can't wait to grow my, as of yet, mini-collection. So if you're interested in what books I've added to my 'travel book collection' so far, just keep on reading!
Greece: The Apartment by Danielle Steel
Greece is the birthplace of my collection. Back in 2017, I went on an unforgettable trip to Santorini with three of my closest friends. We spent a week there, in September, just a week before we were scheduled to move in together for uni-related purposes. So you can only imagine how perfectly meant-to-be it felt when I spotted this book on sale at the airport. The story revolves around a group of four friends, who live in an apartment together in New York. Change the NY setting to a Maltese one and it's basically our biography.
England: The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
A year later, I travelled to London for the first time. At the time, I was a year into my English degree, so I felt like I was seeing so many familiar sites that I'd hitherto read all about in classic novels. A classic that I had not yet read, however, was a Sherlock Holmes story, though it was definitely on my mental TBR. So when I came across this beast of a collection - I didn't even worry about how the 1000-page tome would affect my luggage weight - I knew it would be the perfect book to embody all things London.
Ireland: The Art of Living Alone and Loving It by Jane Mathews
Later that year, in the middle of an Erasmus+ exchange in Suffolk, I decided to go on a very quick trip to Ireland to visit a friend. I spent about an hour roaming around in a bookshop at the centre of Limerick, trying to find a good book. There were some novels set in Ireland, but they didn't really interest me. When I saw this book, though, I knew that I had to get it. At the time, I was practically living alone in a completely different country, so it felt perfectly apt.
Switzerland: One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
This one is a bit of a stretch, but I wasn't really spoilt for choice. When I visited Switzerland for a couple of days in 2019, most of the novels I came across were in foreign languages. When I finally came across a section of books I could actually read, there weren't a lot of options. The premise of this novel intrigued me, though, and this is how I linked it to the trip: the night before, we'd started watching Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston's Murder Mystery in the Airbnb we were staying in - and the book is literally a murder mystery. That was good enough for me.
Italy: The Night Villa by Carol Goodman
2019 also saw me heading off to the sunny streets of the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Again, most bookshops consisted of Italian translations - there was even an Italian translation of Harry Potter which at the time I found absolutely fascinating. So when my friends pointed out an International bookshop, I knew I had to run right in. This novel intrigued me from the moment I lay eyes on it and, luckily enough it was set in Naples and Capri, two places we'd already visited on our trip!
Hungary: The Refugee by Zoltán Böszörményi
A few months ago, I went to Hungary - Budapest, to be exact. It was definitely another memorable trip. One of the things that really struck me was my visit to The House of Terror. It was so haunting to learn a little bit about the hardships that people in Budapest had gone through in the past, so when I saw this book at the gift shop which basically takes what I had just learned and semi-fictionalises it, I had to get it. This is currently the only book in my collection that I have not read yet, but my goal is to get to it by the end of this year.
With a bucket list entry of wanting to visit every single country on the planet, my collection is still relatively miniscule. I have been to France and Spain, as well, but I hadn't started the collection at the time, so I don't have a book to represent those countries. Hopefully, my little hoard will continue to expand in page numbers and priceless memories.
Casey