![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_2\/1713_umbrella.jpg\")
\nMy umbrella is broken. It got caught on some door and one of the ribs broke, unrepairably.<\/p>\n
\nMy umbrella is broken. It got caught on some door and one of the ribs broke, unrepairably.<\/p>\n
Actually it broke already well over a year ago. I was going to buy a new one in Estonia last summer. There is an umbrella shop in Tartu that sells umbrellas that are colourful and pretty and fun to look at. Like this one. In Sweden the shops mostly sell black umbrellas, other single-color umbrellas, and umbrellas with tacky pictures such as palm trees or parrots or dollar bills.<\/p>\n
Before I had bought a new one, Ingrid hinted that she might buy me one as a birthday present – since my birthday very conveniently comes a few weeks after our Estonia trip. She must have forgotten it or changed her mind, though, because I got other gifts instead.<\/p>\n
So then I was going to buy an umbrella in Estonia this summer instead. Somehow our trip ended and I never found the time to go to that shop, so I came home without an umbrella again.<\/p>\n
The funny thing is that during these sixteen months or so, the lack of a properly working umbrella hasn’t bothered me very much. I’ve used this broken one a handful of times. Sometimes I’ve worn my waterproof jacket and trousers instead. Sometimes I’ve simply gone without and hoped that the misting rain wouldn’t get any worse.<\/p>\n
From my childhood I still remember my grandmother’s umbrella, mostly because I wasn’t allowed to use it because of the risk that I might break it. It was beige and lilac in colour, I believe, or maybe brown and purple. Like many things, umbrellas were “defitsiit” goods in Soviet Estonia: they were not produced in sufficient quantity and were not available in shops. You needed the right connections to get hold of one. Grandma’s umbrella was probably a gift from her emigrant friends in Germany rather than some cheap ugly Soviet thing.<\/p>\n
The circles have turned and now I am abroad and making plans to buy an umbrella in Estonia. Although I probably won’t put it off for another year and will order something from the UK where, unlike Sweden, they do know how to make pretty umbrellas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My umbrella is broken. It got caught on some door and one of the ribs broke, unrepairably. Actually it broke already well over a year ago. I was going to buy a new one in Estonia last summer. There is an umbrella shop in Tartu that sells umbrellas that are colourful and pretty and fun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,780,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-estonia","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11802"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11808,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11802\/revisions\/11808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}