The craziest museum we've ever been to

Now that we're pregnant, it seems time to discuss the very strange museum we visited during our trip to Italy in the summer of 2007. A post has been pending about this museum almost since we walked out of the door, that's how memorable it was. But life has gotten in the way and then everyone started getting pregnant. Given the theme of the museum (we call it The Uterus Museum), it seemed slightly inappropriate to inflict it on pregnant women. But, now that I'm pregnant, I've decided that it's time to share the wonders of this special place.

The museum is officially called the Museo Ostertical aka the Obstetrical Museum (and you can find the official museum page in English here). It's not large, just a few rooms, but it carefully documents the training and practice of obstetrics in Italy from the past. Note that this museum makes me super grateful to be living in the 21st century!! A great review of the museum from the journal Nature can be found here (see review).

We don't seem to have any pictures from this museum, it must have been one where they strictly monitored photography or else I was just too distracted by the amazingness of the museum.

The bulk of the exhibits in the museum are various models of the birth process as well as how birth can become complicated. There were models of breech positions as well as techniques to help women manage these types of births. Models showed how to use forceps and other assistance to extract problematic babies.

photo from the Nature.com article

In addition to the birthing models, there were also displays that documented various problems including conjoined twins, internal injuries, as well as models of various deformities that can occur. We found the exhibits just fascinating, particularly considering the era of the museum's displays. It was also an interesting contrast to all of the artwork and church exhibits that are so readily available in Italy. By the time that we reached Bologna, we were ready for other, different things to add to our sightseeing list. Bologna turned out to be a wonderful city for us at this point in our visit as it was full of strange and bizarre museums as well as wonderful food.

What goes up, must come down

This weekend, we joined the college kids for a quick tour of Mexico City (aka DF) and surrounding areas. It was a whirlwind trip, not enough time to really do any of it jusitce, but that's just fine, because... Mom and Peter arrive shortly and we'll have a few days together to explore at a more reasonable pace. Plus, thanks to Oscar, our most fantastic guide, I now can explain a bunch of the things we'll see! Woo hoo!

So, what did we see in this quick tour, well, we started by leaving very early in the morning... mostly we slept on the way down...We first stopped at the Pyramids of Teotihuacan. These gigantic ruins are from 200bc to 600 ad or so and the largest, Pyramid of the Sun, is the second largest in the Americas. This was a highly advanced civilization with a system to bring in fresh water and remove sewage from the city. They installed drains throughout the area (something the Europeans didn't figure out for a long time!). These ruins have mostly been reconstructed (the stones are original but had been covered over the years with dirt, trees, etc. There are still large numbers of undiscovered temples... they expect that every hill in this area is actually a temple.

After hiking up and down the pyramids, we headed into DF itself. We went right downtown to the zocalo (this word means pedastal and the story goes that one of the rulers (current era) was planning on installing some large statue, but he was deposed and all he had finished was te pedastal. Over time, people began to call the plaza 'zocalo' and now you can find zocalos all over mexico, they're always the main plaza). Anyway, we were dropped off in the most enormous plaza and walked over to Palacio National. No pictures for you as we rushed though it (and without flash, they never turn out) although go to this link to see someone else's great photo. However, the murals by Diego Rivera are amazing and recount the history of Mexico.

We also went into the cathedral, a fantastic example of the mix of indigenias and catholic faiths (plus crazy recoccoo art). Then we headed to Templo Mayor. This Aztec ruin was discovered in 1978, right below the streets in DF. They were doing electrical work, and someone hit a rock that turned out to be pre-hispanic. The ended up tearing down some buildings to uncover the ruins (although there is clearly much more as the Spanish built right on top of the Aztec city, however, these are also beautiful historical buildings, and as Oscar put it, 'we're a mix of the two cultures and we need to find a way to preserve both'). The Templo Mayor is celebrating its 30 aniversary (hmmm... just like someone else I know!) and there are great new signs and other information.

We then popped in to the Palacio de Bellas Artes home of more beautiful murals, but weren't allowed to go upstairs as we were running out of time. Peter and Mom will have to tolerate my oohing and ahhing in a few weeks. This beautiful palace is art neuvo on the outside and art deco on the inside and weighs so much that the entire building is sinking. This is a huge problem in DF. The city is built on infill (it was originally a lake) and as the residents continue to use a lot of water, the water table is sinking and the buildings are too. Interestingly, the ruins are rising, so the Aztecs are reclaiming the city!

Finally, after all of this, we arrived at the hotel. A fancy 5 star hotel in fact. It was so great that we didn't really want to leave.


After a bite to eat, we ended up having a little slumber party in our room (a six pack of beer and chips and a movie... yes, I know we were in Mexico City, but it was so great to relax on these comfy beds...)

On Sunday, we went to Xochimilco and took a leisurely boat ride down the floating gardens.

We listened to mariachis

and marimba bands and watched the world go by.

Then we headed to Chapultepec Park and the Museo Nacionale de Antropologia. Here we were very lucky. Our guide, Oscar used to work here and knew the musuem inside and out. We toured several of the civilizations displayed in the museum (there were many more than just the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas that we learned about in Social Studies in 7th grade!).

More pictures to come on Flickr... but the computer connection today is particularly bad. Hopefully I'll get them up tomorrow.

A Visual History of Dead Animals...and A Possible Cause of Species Extinction

'Smile, you're at a weird museum!'

[This is the latest installment of our travel log from our summer trip to Italy. We will add new stories sporadically (like once every six months) until we have no stories left. Today's installment: the Natural History Museum at the University in Bologna. This one is a bit long, as I need to introduce us to Northern Italy and provide some back story.]

Italy is very much two very disparate regions connected only by inclusion in the same country borders, much like Civil War-era America. The south (commonly referred to as The Mezzogiorno, and generally considered the area south of Rome) is mainly agrarian; the north (north of Rome, oddly) is mainly industrial, with internationally famous brands such as Fiat and Ferrari headquartered there, and generally has the higher concentration of wealth. Due to the extreme heat in the south during the summer (and our desire to limit the amount of chaos in our lives; for an example of chaos, see this old story), we headed north for most of our trip.

We honestly didn't know much about most northern Italian cities, except Milan, where I have a cousin. I knew that Milan is a world-class city, with a famous Opera, as well as a center of world fashion and finance. I knew that the highest Italian soccer league (Serie A) is generally dominated by northern Italian teams, since these cities have a higher concentration of wealth and can therefore afford better players. And I knew there were major tourist cities, such as Venice and Florence, that brought more wealth to the region.

Other than that, most of the cities I knew of were for food or sports reasons reasons: Genoa, for its various salami; Parma for its hams (prosciutto) and cheeses (parmigiana); Bologna, for bologna (maybe?) and bolognese-style pasta sauce; Modena, for its balsamic vinegar; Turin, for Juventus, their soccer team, and home of Fiat.

Early in our trip, we made a quick list of cities we'd like to visit and did a quick read through in our travel guide to help us refine the list. One city that made the list was Bologna, which is home to the oldest continually-operating University in the world. We figured that a college town has to be pretty cool right? Well, when we would tell native Italians that our next stop was going to be Bologna, they would inevitably ask, 'Why?' (this happened at least 3 times I can distinctly remember, and probably closer to 10).

I'm not sure if it was lingering side-effects from my sickness in Lucca (where we had just come from) or the doubts planted by all the 'Why would you go to Bologna?" statements, but our first impression was not good. We had heard/read that the north is industrial, but we weren't really prepared for a capital C City. In Italy, all the tourist cities you visit are kind of quaint and quiet: Florence, Venice, Lucca, Assisi; even Rome doesn't feel like a City to some extent. But Bologna is a City: wide streets with lots of traffic, densely laid out, tall buildings, sketchy characters, alleys, trash on the streets, etc. When we walked out of the train station, I think we were shell-shocked.

After we settled in to our really-nice-but-run-by-some-kind-of-sketchy-people hotel, we started to wander around the city and found that it wasn't actually so unlike the rest of Italy as we initially feared. (Tangent: supposedly, Bruno Magli, the shoes guy, lived in the same building as our hotel and he paid some old woman to stand in the lobby and visually inspect, and yell at, everyone who came and went. If you know anything about old Italian women, you'll realize this may be the greatest form of security available). Of course, we found some excellent food, wine, and ice cream in the city, as well as the best falafel/gyro place we ate at in Italy. We were able to walk all over without any problems. We also found a cool photo exhibit on Gypsies (or Roma), watched a movie in Italian in the main square, saw some monuments to the Italian resistance during WWII, and found a phallic statue of Neptune (all of which I will hope to expand on at some other time - this intro is already too long and I haven't even gotten to the main point yet).

But the main attraction of Bologna was the University and its museums. You have to figure if an institution has been around for almost 1000 years, it has had to have seen some cool stuff, including the 'discovery' of the 'New World' and colonialism.

As we wandered around the University, we came across this place, which in retrospect, is one of my favorite places in all of Italy that we went to:

I believe this says something like:
The University of Studying
Museum of Zoology, Comparative Anatomy,
and Anthropology.
But you probably already figured that out.

The museum wasn't in our guide book, and we really had no idea what to expect. But Kimberly likes animals and nature, and I'm always up for an adventure, so we went in. Possibly the best decision we made all trip.

This place was both a museum and a department building for the University. But, it was empty - the offices, the museum, everywhere - and unlocked. I could have walked out of that place with a jar full of dead snakes,

I think that one in the front is trying to make a break for it.

a rhinoceros head (honestly, I have no idea what that is the skull of. A saber-tooth tiger? A Woolly Mammoth? Any help?),

and an elephant leg waste basket (in retrospect, I wish I had taken this, but it probably would have caused quite the stir at customs).

Loosely translated this sign reads 'Don't put trash in the Elephant leg.'
Apparently they don't teach reading at the University of Bologna, as the leg was full of trash.

When we first walked in, we just noticed some stuffed heads on the wall, kind of like a hunting lodge. Then we saw a whole wall of heads of various African game animals.

So well ordered and presented. But could someone dust them, please?

Then we started wandering, turned a corner, and found this:

This picture does no justice to how many cases of animals there actually were at this place.

Rows and rows and rows of animals, stuffed or preserved. And it looked like it hadn't been well-maintained.

Some animals looked like they were still decomposing.

Usually, the shell is attached to the turtle.

Some were actually decomposing, because their preserving fluids had evaporated.

This possum (opossum?) has definitely seen better days.
Someone might want to top off that embalming fluid.

There were extinct animals.

I originally thought this was a dodo, but looking at it again, it looks like a big eagle. I don't know.

Animals on the verge of extinction.

Kiwis,and most other small, flightless birds, are rare in the wild in New Zealand because of the introduction of possums and cats to the islands. And the Zoological Museum of Bologna.

Imaginary half-and-half animals.

I think they were trying to make a point about evolution with these guys, but still, kind of strange.

Re-enactments of the circle of life.

I wonder if they were found this way in the wild. That would be cool.

Weird interpretations of life in the wild.

I'm not a biologist, but I'm pretty sure boars and seals don't kiss/snuggle in the wild.
Nor, do I believe, they share the same habitat.

An ostrich egg.

That's big.

What appears to be a Unicorn corn.

A scientist may say narwhal horn, but I say Unicorn horn.
And some assorted stuffed heads.

Animals we ate on our travels.

Wild boar (or cinghale, in Italian, I think) is very tasty in sauces and in salami.

Bambi and his family.

The Lion King and his family.

These lions have no back halves. They end at that wall.

Hedwig.

Stupid Death Eaters

And this cabinet full of weird, random horns, stuffed heads, and other stuff.

In all, I think we took over 100 pictures in about an hour and a half (I've put most of them on Flickr, but tried to get rid of the ones that were really out of focus or otherwise not good). We were totally infatuated with this place and started referring to it as the Extinction Museum. In fact, we went back the next day because we didn't believe it really existed.And the really crazy thing: this wasn't even the weirdest place we found in Bologna (looking back, its actually not as weird as it was when we were there). But that's another story for another day.

[Photos here on Flickr, and here in slideshow format]

Art on a Stick Not Contained Within

My mother came to visit this past weekend on her way home from visiting my niece. We're still fairly new to this part of the country, so we went exploring new places together. We visited our local downtown and the University. And we found some pretty good local restaurants.

On Saturday, with Kimberly stuck in the office studying, me and my mom went to Des Moines, where the World Food Fest was being held. We ate some great ethnic food, including pupusas, tamales, and BBQ ribs, while wandering around the new up-and-coming East Village neighborhood (think Harvard Square 200 years ago, or the Pearl 20 years ago).

After eating our fill, we went to the Des Moines Art Center, which turned out to be wonderful. Located in one of the older neighborhoods in the city, the museum is set in a park with lots of outdoor installations.

The museum building itself is a fantastic space. I don't know much about architecture, but even I know the names Saarinen and I.M. Pei, who, along with Richard Meier (who is also apparently very famous), designed the three very distinct wings of the Art Center. It was a great environment to see some great art, particularly the Meier wing, which was full of natural light and superb art.

I know even less about art than about architecture, but I know I liked a lot of the art in the museum. I also know enough to recognize names like Hopper, Sargent, O'Keefe, and Rodin, all of whom have pieces on display. The art ranged from impressionist to contemporary, with a lot in between.

Obviously, as stand alone entities, the building and the art are amazing pieces of work. But the thing that most impressed me was that it seemed like the art and the buildings were designed with each other in mind. For this reason alone, the museum was a success.

We only were able to explore about half of the museum, so Kimberly and I will certainly have to go back, especially to explore the outdoor grounds.

And when you come to visit, we'll have something else to do besides go to the State Fair.