When we travel we like to carry with us a small stash of token gifts. These will be given after we are hosted by family, in a friend’s home, Airbnb, and even hostels.
Good lightweight and inexpensive gifts are seeds and postcards from our home state. The people you meet while traveling are very curious about where you come from and these little gifts can tell them part of the story. You tell the rest.
A thank you is written on the postcard and set on the nightstand along with the seeds upon our departure.
This is most rewarding to us when we hear many years later that our friend in Amsterdam eagerly anticipates spring on his houseboat parked on the canal. The blooming of poppies frame the deck of his home. Or when we returned to the Mountain Hostel in the Swiss Alps to find poppies sharing flower boxes with geraniums.
Sowing the seeds of friendship from afar last a lifetime.
