Folklore Museum (25/06/2013)

Sorry for the delay. On top of experiencing everything, I also have papers to write for each of the museums that we go to each day, and German homework. As a result, this gets put on the back burner, though I do take notes of funny things that happen throughout the day so I  don’t forget.

Anyway,

My day pretty much started with my Pass being checked—AGAIN. I was on the subway heading to the institute, and was on maybe the second out of four stops. Train just leaves the station and all of a sudden this normal looking guy jumps up and asks to see our passes. He has his little tag around his neck, and a scanner-type thing (I’m assuming to issue tickets or to pay via debit card?) in his hand. I was nearer to the door, and one of the last people checked, but this woman in front of me handed him her pass, and he shook his head. Was it expired? I don’t know. But he looked at it again, and flipped it over to see the dates I guess, and it was fine. When the woman turned around to make room for him to get to me, she looked obviously frustrated by the whole thing.  Not a job to make friends, I guess.

For Culture class,  we went to the Volkskunde Museum. It was really cool, and not nearly as flashy as a lot of the other ones, since it depicted “low culture”.  In all honesty, I was pretty surprised at how intricate and how nice everything was, despite being owned by normal people. When you think of the normal people in a time of princesses and nobility, you usually just assume that they were dirt poor with no decorated items.

The Museum was founded in 1895, and used to be a manor. Walking around, you'll see that it's really really big for a house, but not a super large museum. They do have everything really well laid out though. It's main logo is the picture below, with the guy having his nose bit by his bird-hat. It's called "The Bird of Self Reflection", and used to be a sled-head. (Kind of like on the bow of a ship, but for a sled. It has a neat saying that goes with it, that's like, "Take your own nose", meaning, "look at yourself, and not at others". I haven't been able to find it outline anywhere, but the tour guide told us it was an Austrian saying, haha.

The "Logo" of the museum. 

In the same room, they had masks that are apparently still used today sometimes. I'm still finding it crazy the amount of detail put into these things.

This was my favorite mask.

It might be hard to see, but there's a mirror in the middle of all those flowers.

The second room is had more cooking stuff. We learned about how the people cooked on the floor for the longest time, and got to see the various pots. The little spiky cart that you see in both of the pictures was used to cook songbirds. All of us were pretty surprised at that. 

You sort of get to see the size of the rooms
from this picture.

Tweet tweet. 

The wardrobes were probably the most surprising to me. Mind you, these are everyday people! This wardrobe is a wedding gift  that was commonly given. It has the initials on top and is just really really big and really really pretty. This one isn't anything extra extravagant, either. They all were like this. 

Talk about practical wedding gifts. 

Wood. Everywhere. Everything was made from wood. It made sense that St. Florentine was a popular Saint in the day. I'd stay on the good side of the fire guy, too if everything I had that wasn't alive was wooden. 

I take that back, after the oven was build, that wasn't wooden.

Wooden walls, wooden floor, not wooden girl or oven.

Not shown in the picture above is the wooden table, wooden chairs, wooden benches, wooden bed, wooden bowls (that went in a hidden compartment in the table), and wooden silverware.

A more modern room from last time. See all the wood? 

The stick at the top swivels around, and you can hang your lantern on it. We all ooh'd at that, lol.

Just don't mistake her for your dance partner--ouch!

Tired of wood? Here's another oven. She warmed a dance area in a restaurant a long time ago. You would put wood in from another room, which I thought was neat. Our guide also told us that she was a good representation on how the people viewed fire. Her tummy is about where the fire would be, and so "fire as life bringing", it also cooked food, and was just overall really useful.

Super Cool sleigh. The head from the beginning would have gone on one of these. 

Closer view of the girl

Closer view of the Hunter

I think the thing that most people found hilarious was the "racism table". Okay, really the name is "Table of Nations" but hear me out. What this pretty chart below shows is a stereotypical picture of a giver race at the top. The far left is Spanish or French, and on the far right you have the Turks. The way the top is set up, is from "best" to worst in the eyes of whoever made this table. For instance, under 'intelligence', it says that the Spanish and French are super smart, and the Russians and Turkish people are really dumb. It goes on like that all the way down. 

Proving Stereotypes existed since

Another pretty awesome piece that shows countries poking fun at one another is the one down there. This one is pretty neat because there is an American in the group. Can you guess which one it is? Hint: It's not the monkey (as some in our class answered)

I didn't look like any of them. 

No, it's not the old lady

This is the German, with the Italian in the back left

 The German one was kindof funny. You can open his mouth and put a coin in, and if you go to the back side, you'll see where he's actually sitting on like a potty with his pants pulled down. The coin ends up in the toilet. bowl. Our tour guide said there was a saying parents would tell their kids.S he didn't say it loud, because she wasn't sure if she should say it out loud. It was along the lines of "Ich glaube nicht, Scheiße Geld", which would mean something like, " I don't believe I shit gold", haha.

 

French man

The one playing the flute is the French man. Courtney, Morgan, and I got a kick out of his use of the middle finger, but we decided that it probably doesn't mean the same thing. Oh well, we still have that as our inside joke, now.

You found him!

The American was kind of surprising for us. There you go, though. The American.


























And the puppy. Because it's cute

Woof.