The Museum Experience

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The Museum Experience

One of my favorite things to do when traveling in a new city is to visit the museums. I

have never been to a city that did not offer the usual museum fare, usually in the form of the “Anytown Art Museum”, or the “Anytown Museum of Natural History”. While these types of museums house some incredible artifacts, and I do visit them often, I also like to seek out museums of a more unusual sort.

Museums are mostly the same just about everywhere you go, both in the United States

and Europe. They offer the visitor a glimpse into the past culture of any given city or country by displaying relics found throughout the world. But there are also many museums that showcase artifacts of the culture in a much more specific way. Some fine examples of these kinds of museums include the Pez Museum, close to San Francisco, dedicated to the little candy dispenser, the Muzeum hracek in Prague, dedicated to toys of the world, both past and present, the Dungeon, a history of Medieval torture, also in Prague, and the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, dedicated to all things Liberace--and I mean all things. The Pez Museum is not actually in San Francisco, but is located south of the city in a town called Burlingame. If you are in the Bay Area for any reason, do not miss this museum! Remember when you were a little kid, and you loved to collect Pez dispensers? Well, times have changed, and now Pez collections mean big money, and big business. The most expensive Pez dispenser to date is the short lived Mr. Potato Head dispenser, complete with a make-it-yourself face. This Pezsells for $5,000 at auction! This museum contains literally hundreds of Pez Dispensers, collected since their inception back in the Fifties. While Pez may not compare to a Rodin sculpture in terms of being considered classical art, obviously there are some people out there who appreciate the finer nuances of a mere candy dispenser.

Toy museums abound throughout the world. I have been lucky enough to have visited

two toy museums in my life, both in Europe. The first one was in a quaint town in Germany

called Rothenburg. This town dates back to the Medieval era, and is one of the few towns in Western Europe that is still contained within it’s original defense walls. Because most of the buildings inside the walls are original, this town has become a major tourist attraction for European tourists.

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