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| Tourism in Europe: A World of Fun |
"Come to Europe! It's full of history." What this really means is that Europe is full of old things supposed ipso facto to exude importance. This is analogous to an old person insisting on their right to teach history by virtue of being older than most people. Old stuff can, of course, be very interesting, but this happens only when it's hammered into meaningful shape by someone who knows something about it.
So with this in mind, here are eight
thoroughly uninteresting places you shouldn't bother visiting in
Eastern and Central Europe. Uninteresting not because of something
lacking in themselves (not usually at least) but because no one has
bothered to make them interesting.
1. Prague Public Transport Museum
"Oddly pedestrian," was my
(unfairly ignored) quip. A run through tram history is only ever
going to command a niche audience, but I'm - potentially at least -
among that number and was still left wanting. A dull shed of 120 years' worth of old trams, it's literally made for tram-spotters.
Unfortunately the most recent 20 have been left off (because, I
suppose, they're still being used). 1990 appears to have marked the
point at which tram evolution sped up, so almost all the exhibits are
very similar. The inspection of very minor differences this
entails is what I imagine watching evolution in real time would be
like: that is, a kind of cosmic paint-drying process.
2. Rynek Underground, Krakow
A big budget
spectacular (holographs projected onto curtains of mist!) which fails
to hide the fact you're really just walking around some old
foundations. Unlike other entries in this post, it's essentially
dull, not just dull in execution, and the show-off designers know it.
Full of reams of incomprehensible statistics about column widths and
periodical fires, no amount of interactivity can rescue it. The
original investors wanted to open a subterranean mall, which would at
least have served a penetrable function.
3. Bastion Tunnels Museum, Tallinn
A short film
(confusingly fronted by a friendly cartoon worm) whizzes through all
of Estonia's history, then a stentorian, glazed-eyed guide marches
you below ground where you take a "train to the future"
(essentially a Stannah stair-lift placed horizontally down a narrow,
unadorned tunnel). The train was broken when we went, so we looked at
it and then walked. At the end of the tunnel was a TV showing
possible futures of Tallinn. Then we walked back, listening as the
tour guide vented her frustrations at the city's homeless (selfish
enough to take up residence in the tunnels in winter). Next we were
shown some dressed up shop dummies in various states of medieval
contortion and finally kicked into the mid-day sun, blinking dizzily.
4. Museum of Czech History, The National
Monument on Vitkov Hill, Prague
Vitkov is home to
a glowering Jan Zizka, eyeing up the city below him from horseback.
But the museum in the building behind him lacks any of his stern
atmospherics. Another confusion of showy exhibits, garbled
translations and lack of direction, there's some great stuff hidden
in here. The problem is, with its jumping from one point in
historical time to another, its lack of decent writing, and its
strange pacing, it manages to make modern Czech history at once
boring and dispiriting. Then it starts on about sports uniforms.
Thoroughly unenlightening despite the spectacle.
5. Funicular Railway, Budapest
Ok, it might seem
churlish to get angry with transport (twice), but this is appallingly
dull. You can't really see out of it, it doesn't go very high or
fast, and it costs a lot of money. The fact you're riding something
old adds nothing to the experience, and certainly the terrifying
staff won't make things better. Save the money and go on Budapest's
much more entertaining Metro Line 1 - the second oldest in the world,
complete with little tiny trains and platforms that look like some
Georgian nostalgist's living room. Excellent.
6. Design Museum, Helsinki
By no stretch is
this either eastern or central, but it is boring. Like
everything else in Scandinavia it's very cool and not at all
hateable. In fact, I really wanted to enjoy it. But there's just so
much of it. This is a real case of quantity over quality. Eventually
the comparative novelty of seeing different types of the same thing
(scissors with square handles; scissors with round handles, and so
on) wears off and you start to feel like you're just wandering around
a warehouse.
7. The Biggest Church in Gdansk
Once the biggest
Lutheran church in the world, it's spacious enough for 25,000
worshippers to fit in. Pews aside, there's not really much there,
however. It's capacious and echoey, but with its white-washed walls
it feels more like a badly painted waiting room than a site of God's
magnificence. It's also completely open, meaning there's no point
walking around it because you can see it all from the entrance.
Where's the Mystery in that?
8. Prison Museum, Brno
Finally, Brno. Not
a city known for its abundance of charm, this is the literal
pinnacle of its mediocrity. In the heart of the hilltop castle
Spilberk, this museum promises a re-creation of daily life in the
underground warren of tunnels (again!) that once made up the local prison.
Except here the typical badly posed shop dummies in silly wigs are
decidedly thin on the ground. In their place is - well, nothing
actually. An occasional plaque bearing a number guides your feet.
Apart from that you are left in semi-darkness pondering blank grey
walls and your own existential pointlessness. No info cards, no real
clue as to what went on, no pictures, just the sound of your own
foot-steps in the dimming twilight.
And two honourable exceptions...
DDR Museum, Berlin
Good exhibits, proper lighting, a sense
of historical place and time, and a prodding sense of humour, combine
to genuinely illuminating effect. I left not only knowing more, but
also entertained and a tiny bit baffled. Which is exactly how a tourist attraction should leave you.
Rakvere Castle, Estonia
You'll almost
certainly never go there (it's in a provincial Estonian town with all
the tourist pull of Gillingham), but it is a very good day out. No
convincing sense of history or research (budget limitations probably
pertain here), but it does make the most of its limitations. People bound
about on horses, there's a re-creation of a medieval red light
district, and a haunted chamber in which a grizzly old man assaults
you in bad German. Great fun.
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