Saturday, April 14, 2012

Budget Vacations - Museum of Broken Relationships


As a public service in these tough economic times I suggest various cheap, educational, inspiring and uplifting vacation destinations you can take your family to visit. Today I would like to recommend the Museum of Broken Relationships.

The museum displays items, with a brief explanation of their significance, sent to them by people whose relationships have gone sour. As Rick Poyner explains in his post Museum of Broken Relationships:
The premise is very simple. Disappointed lovers donate an object that held meaning for them in a relationship. They provide basic details about location and how long their relationship lasted, and write a little story to explain what happened. These anonymous narratives can be terse in the extreme. The can of love incense from someone in Bloomington, Indiana is accompanied by just two words: “Doesn’t work.” Most go into a little more detail and many are very affecting. After 13 years of marriage a man from Berlin decided to leave his wife because he felt their love had cooled. The woman returned to her own country, taking their little dog with her. She was brokenhearted and sent him a package of things that included a flashing dog collar light — she had bought one for the dog so it couldn’t get lost when it ran away in the dark. The man carried it everywhere. About a year after the split, the woman took her life in a hotel room. In the museum, the red collar light flashes forlornly on an illuminated shelf. The man clearly found it unbearable to own. He says it reminds him of a heartbeat.
The museum is located in Zagreb, Croatia so you may need a plane ticket to get there. And I don't want to hear the usual complaints from you ingrates that a plane ticket prices it out of the range of a budget vacation. Did you not read the excerpt above? It has meaningful blinking dog collars and cans of love incense. Who can put a price on that?

Below are some more pictures from their exhibits:


No comments: