#7.5.13

But I do not have those issues so I LOVED this museum! The entire time I kept thinking about how much my mom would be freaked out by the stuff I saw (especially the area I affectionately dubbed ‘the womb room’) and that just made it better. After all, like all kids, I really enjoy horrifying my mother. (I write this secure in the knowledge that she reads these blog entries. LOVE YOU MOM)

My favorite room though, was one that wasn’t actually part of the tour. I was looking for the bathroom, and accidently stumbled upon what seemed to be a meeting room. All it had was a round table and some chairs. And the most amazing posters on the wall!

  Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a scientific examination of Popey’s muscles, and what Minny Mouse would look like pregnant. I love stuff like that, where they blend science and fandom to make the most epic of science fictions. Someone obviously poured a lot of love and thought into these images. They’re fascinating.

Of the actual museum rooms, I think the one that will stay with me the longest is the womb room. It was, shockingly, filled with plaster casts of wombs with babies inside. They were made to teach young doctors what could happen during pregnany, and so they were all depiciting something going horribly wrong. It made me REALLY want to never have kids. I didn’t even know it was possible for the baby to kick through the woman’s womb…

This is literally the only nice one I could find. Look, twins! It’s Miriam and Leontine.

Seriously though, that room is enough to make any woman run screaming to the nearest hospital to get her tubes tied. You want to make sure kids are carefuly about contraceptives? Bring them to this place, where they can see exactly what can go wrong. Let me give you a little spoiler, sans picture because I am a kind soul.

What happens if the baby’s not lined up right, and there’s too much force pulling on it?

BODY PARTS POP OFF AND GET STUCK IN THE WOMB, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS. YOU COULD HAVE A LITTLE FETUS HEAD STUCK INSIDE YOU. 

Or at least, that’s what the museum taught me. So yeah. Where’s the nearest adoption agency exactly?

There were other, less terrifying rooms though – ones that talked about the history science, showing off things like the early microscopes.

There was also an exhibit that seemed to be a case filled with bongs. The tag insisted that it was for purifying phosphoric stone, a very expensive material, but I’m still pretty sure any college student worth their salt would be able to recognize that thing. Hey guys, now if your parents find your bong you can tell them you’re just researching ancient scientific instruments! It’s for SCIENCE.

There was one piece that I found pretty fascinating, pretty much because it wasn’t really an exhibit? I think it's just supposed to be honoring the people who's work the museum is focused on,

I was weirdly fascinated by this, not because of the actual art but because of what it showed. I just kept thinking about how the woman held the brains while the man held the heart. It probably really wasn’t meant to say anything beyond “these people loved the science behind people” but I keep thinking about how significant it is that the woman was shown with the brain while the man had the heart. It’s a reversal of the usual stereotype, where the man is the more logical one while the woman is ruled by her emotions (her heart) – and yet it also made me think about how, when asked about their ideal companion, women are more concerned with intelligence, when they seek companions but men are more concerned with thing like kindness. They’re both seeking something in each other that is illustrated here. I don’t really know what I’m saying. It was just an arresting image.

Another arresting image was this woman – the contrast between her sensual litheness, like any statue in a museum, and her red insides spilling out.

what can I say? I'm a big fan of mixing beauty and horror.

I also went to a small museum upstairs from this one, which was devoted to history of the University. It was so fascinating to see the black and white snapshots, and to remember that throughout the ages stupid college kids have been stupid college kids. There is no such thing as the good old days, and if you say that people were less idiotically human back then then you obviously have memory problems

For lunch, I finally broke down and got tortellini in broth (brodo). It’s a specialty of the area but I’d been resisting because, well, I’d seen it and it didn’t exactly look appealing. Little balls of dough in clear broth. Yummy.

But oh my god, I have learned once again to never judge a book by its cover because it was amazing. The soup was so flavorful, and the little tortellini were somehow still al dente and so had some bite to them. Plus they burst with flavor, so meaty and rich for such tiny little packets. 

After lunch, I took the train to Reggio Emilia where Daniela picked me up and took her to her home. I got in contact with her through Annie, a woman I met while traveling South East Asia with my family last year, and she invited me to stay with her a few days.

She had a POOL. It was naturally filtered by plants, and I just lounged by it for the rest of the evening.

For dinner we had proscutto that I’d brought, and some roast beef that I ate after sprinkling oil and lemon and pepper on top.

Afterwards, we went to the restaurant owned by Daniela’s family. It was actually really fun, because there was this waiter Francesco who Daniela was teaching English. Daniela basically threw us together so that he could improve his English, and I loved watching him suffer through our horrifically complicated language. He was a good sport about it! I just enjoy people’s pain. To quote a song, “SCCHHAAAUUNDENFREUDE! People taking pleasure from your pain!”