Souvenirs from the Matrix

I was on a walk in Berlin with a friend.
Yesterday it rained and I bought an umbrella in desperation to meet another friend on time, without getting wet.

Made me think of souvenirs. The first shop I found selling umbrellas was a shop for luxury children's toys. I paid 12€ for mine, and it's really small. It has viking cartoon designs, looks like something from a Disney film, Asterix, something like that.

Today it has been sunny but since I now have an umbrella and I wouldn't want to end up doing the same thing again (walking in the rain is not an option), I brought my umbrella today, thinking "you never know..."

Why do we buy souvenirs?

In French, the verb souvenir means to remember. It can also be a noun, like it is used in English and Swedish. So a souvenir is supposed to be a memory, to make you remember something.

Why are there souvenir shops? So that someone can make money selling cheap mass-produced items of low cost, for a high price, to tourists that cannot come up with anything better?

The Matrix comes to mind.
I don't want mass-produced memories. I want to have my own. Make my own.

Needless to say, I dislike souvenir shops.

I obviously paid more than I had to, to get an umbrella.
I also got an immediate solution to my problem: rain, and I also got a good souvenir. Something I actually bought because I had use for it, and it makes for a much better memory than any crappy item I could have found in a so-called souvenir shop. The rain stopped after about 5 minutes.

Lesson learned: next time I'm travelling, I will bring a cheap and small umbrella from home.
Thanks to: Pia & Deborah for taking English classes very seriously.