Every now and then I suppress my hatred for cities
with their streets filled with too many tourists who take up all my personal
space I value so much and give it a try. I have to - all the culture happens
there so I must call my best friend and see all the cool exhibitions.
This time we could not wait to see Tim Burton’s
stuff. Oh yeah, after watching Nightmare before Christmas over and over again since our teenage years
(plus his other works, of course) we were almost ecstatic about the idea of pleasing
our eyeballs even more with the genius of Burton’s
crooked mind.
But to make it worthwhile, we decided to go to
other exhibitions as well. So, ehm, here we go. Or rather there we went.
The first to visit was a some kind of culinary
exhibition promising to lead us through the stages of kitchen development
through time. Yup, it goes like this: the cavemen eating cadavers and other
kind of gross stuff, then bam! the fire is not just for warming us up, then
bam! the middle ages and bam! the kitchens out grandmas have then bam! unwanted
advertisement rooms “cleverly” designed by some booze producers to elate a
false feeling of history and them bam! up the stairs into a modern kitchen,
history of Czech cuisine depictured on posters and yet another smug display of what to buy when
it comes to cutlery. It was too short, too stupid and the fact that the guide
(yup, not even a guide can lift your spirits) gave us a sample of boozeless
mead probably infuriated me a little further. So unless you are threatened, don’t
bother going to the Gastronomy
Museum – it’s just a
waste of your time and money.
Next, we went to the Choco Story
Museum. With our mood so
down after the first exhibition even a roadkill smeared with chocolate could
have make us happy again so I had a feeling this would be awesome. That was
BEFORE they made me pay an astrological entrance fee. After that I was
determined to see this through entirely different eyes. My expectations were
super high. Of course, this was even shorter, with a video anyone can probably
find on youtube. It included a short demonstration of how to make chocolate candy
– one of which was given to each of us which again, was good, but made us angry
because ONE PIECE OF CANDY IS SIMPLY NOT ENOUGH! So we marched into the store
of this museum and when we saw the prices we knew why just one candy. If you
are a tourist and they tickle your taste buds with one piece of chocolate, you
don’t know that the shop underneath is a trap. You are probably bad at
comparing your currency with Crowns so you buy yourself a chocolate bar or
something more and think you are finally satisfied while you totally made the
evil person in charge of this museum happy. But after the Gastronomy Museum
fail this seems more likely to entertain you. 
Well, third time is a charm, right? Thank
goodness for finally reaching what we wanted. Burton’s exhibition with its numerous rooms
filled with beautiful drawings, films and 3D art ensured we finally found our
little piece of optically-pleasing heaven. For this, I have no words, it was
everything we expected and more.
And lastly, since there still was time to kill,
we decided to take a look at Czech modern art – the lady who sold us the
tickets told us to hurry, for the tour has already started. That
seemed promising. Until we heard the guide. I mean, I get that you have to
start somewhere when you are new but you should not let the others see your
insecurity. You should definitely not look around the room trying to find the
painting you are talking about (hint, you are standing right next to it, for
god’s sake!), you should not mix up the artist’s names and you should not read
those little notes on the wall next to each painting (we can read, we don’t
need a “commented tour” for that!). So after this shock we tried to mentally
shut down our ears and just read all those notes ourselves and strode out of
the room in record time. The paintings were beautiful (I wish I could get
closer look at Toyen but I just couldn’t bear it anymore).
Over all, it was a good day. I mean spending
time with friends is always quality time no matter how shitty place you go to.
At least there’s a lot to talk about and to remember, ‘cause let’s face it – I will
remember the bad stuff longer than the good stuff.
