Kristan Lawson - Weird Europe: A Guide to Bizarre, Macabre, and Just Plain Weird Sights

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Contents

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Frank Key; Heidi, Sam and Edward Byrne; Jenna and Chris Pascoe; Fabian Hahn and Stefan for putting us up and putting up with us; Natalie Weinstein and David Kaim for holding down the fort; and our editor, Greg Cohn.

Photo Credits

All photographs in this book copyright 1999 Kristan Lawson, except the following:

Preface

Paris is whatthe Eiffel Tower? Its also sewer tours, St. Catherines corpse and the Museum of Counterfeits. Rome is the Trevi Fountain? Yeah. But its also the Museum of the Souls of the Dead. Under Greeces ruined temples are miles and miles of spooky caves. And it could be argued that you havent really seen Sweden if youve never slept in a hotel made entirely out of snow.

Frolic in a Pippi Longstocking theme park. Tour a chapel built entirely of human skulls. Play at being a Viking, a leper, a caveman, a Celt. Visit Peter Sellers memorial rosebush. Then prospect for emeralds before lunch.

Another Europe reverberates just under the surface of all those cafs and cathedrals youve seen in pictures. Its weird Europe, a wonderland of the macabre, the shocking, the irresistible, the strangely gorgeous. This is where youll see mummified monks, shin-kicking tournaments and the worlds largest wallpaper collection. This is where youll glide along underground lakes, get lost in mazes and watch mosquitoes play chess. Its where youll see Bavarians impersonating cowboys.

These attractions werent designed with you, the foreign tourist, in mind. Most of them sprang from someones passion, some obsession, some spasm that couldnt be suppressed. How else to explain the Dutchman who covered the walls, ceilings, floors and furniture of his home in shiny cigar-bands? Or the French cemetery worker who mosaicked his entire house with bits of shattered plates? Now their oeuvres await you. And how do you explain museums devoted to smuggling, to spying, to artworks so small they can only be seen through a microscope? You wont find Lunds Nose Collection in other books. You wont find the Undertakers Museum in a picture postcard showing Viennas grandeur.

This isnt the Europe you studied in school. Its the one where revelers in Renaissance garb pelt each other with oranges. Its the one where Siamese twins, if you know where to look, are preserved under glass. This Europe is minding its own business, waiting for you to match its obsessions with your own.

In this book youll find pictorial keys guiding you to attractions in various categoriesUnderground Places, Outrageous Art, Vulgarities, and so on. But weird has so many meanings, from offbeat to hilarious to tragic. Medical exhibits showing what can go wrong with the human body and mind are definitely weird. But so are animatronic bears.

So go for itscratch the surface.

Key to Symbols