Oh, those culture days...

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.