Field Museum

Wait a second. Me? A museum? I can see anyone who has even remotely met me before shaking their head now in disbelief. I understand.

Of course I didn't want to go to a museum. Hello? We were walking towards the Shedd Aquarium- the biggest indoor aquarium in the world! Yeah, the head-shaking now turns into mere eyebrow-raising. An aquarium .. big deal. But you have to admit it does sound vaguely interesting. They're supposed to have sharks and everything.

Alas, despite it being a perfectly normal working day during the week and even before noon, the line in front of the aquarium went on .... and on ..
.. and I'm sure you can see where I'm heading.
Away from here.

So the aquarium obviously was an interesting place but interesting for way too many people.

Guess what is right next to the aquarium and doesn't have any line at all .. And - probably because I hadn't been to a museum in a long time - I couldn't remember why exactly I didn't go into museums.

So after minimal fiddling with the lease of my apartment (to prove I'm a Chicago "resident") and after starting to explain that we had no U of C ID "yet" (like I'm ever gonna get one .. heheh), we would be happy to show our German student IDs though, the woman at the "guest relations" desk of the museum quickly gave us the student discount and got rid of us. It seems that if you go to that much trouble to make up such an incredible story like that you're visiting students from another country and not having proper ID "yet" - you deserve the discount anyway. She wanted to see neither lease nor German student ID.

Once inside, I found that the place held some promise for me after all ..Yum.

And then, there was an exhibition that supposedly was time-sensitive or something, since it said on our tickets that we were scheduled to go there at 12:30. So we did.This did look somewhat interesting.And these Americans seem to know that museums are generally boring and they do try hard to keep you interested. And as we all know, the things that sell best are sex,cute little funny animations (lots of them actually)and of course, murder/death/kills.
Lots of them also.But hey, they really did put a lot of effort into this exhibition.And who would have thought - some of this stuff was actually interesting. Some.And those comedians/museum geeks really went all out .. "Don't blink - you might miss these tetrapods that lived only during the Triassic Period." Haha! That's funny stuff.Needless to say, by now, I was bored. And it all came back to me .. why I avoided museums where I could. They were boring! How could I forget that?But Americans really are something else. Right outside the exhibition was this. At first I thought they had some really lifelike robots in there. But no, these were actual people, one really old guy at the microscopes and a considerably younger one discussing apparently something about dates, since they were gesturing towards and fiddling with a calendar on the wall. "Is this a real lab?" the panel reads below the probably one-way mirror that formed their walls. And the answer was: "Absolutely! It's one of three labs here at The Field Museum in which vertebrate fossils are prepared."Freaky stuff!

"Do Not Knock on the Glass!" the paper on the wall read. "We are working on very fragile animal fossils from all over the world. These bones are very important research specimens, and can be easily damaged. Preparing fossils requires patience and careful attention. Please help us out, and do not try to distract the preparators." Uh - sure. But could I maybe pet or feed them?Right along those lines is this Native American making a Totem Pole on displayand this woman knitting away for everyone to see, comment on, critique and throw their kleenexes at. Weird.
Anyway. In between, by the way, we had gone into a temporary exhibition about the work and life of Mendel that was also beautifully done and interesting, alas, top secret. As in, no pictures. Oh well, less for me to upload.

The one "big" attraction this Museum boasts is Sue. Sue's head is depicted below. It's the bigger one of the two. No, I mean the one on the right. Kidding! Don't kill me!Anyway, that head above belongs to the skeleton below.It's a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Or rather it was one. One bone-digger called Sue found the first few of her bones so they named the big Rex after her.She is kind of pretty I have to admit. And they seem to think so, too.So far unwilling to forfeit the rest of the day so easily that we had paid the admission fee for, Trillian insisted on going to the exhibition on the "Ancient Americas" and "Ancient Egypt". I will try and bore you only minimally with the "highlights".

Like "in Spanish only" - does anyone else find that weird?Also in this exhibition, they did get cute with us.But after the Ancient Americas and on my way to Egypt I was just about ready to lie down next to herand have someone say this:But there was some fun to be had in the Egyptian exhibition after all. For example this thing:When I looked through the hole, I first saw this.A lightbulb? Wonderful indeed. OK, here is what I guess you were actually supposed to see.Just ignore the huge bulb at 12 o'clock. So much work and attention to detail and they find no better way to light it all than to put a bulb in your face. Oh well - I won't be curator of this museum any time soon luckily.

So we looked at Trillian as an "Ancient Egyptian" before even she got bored and we headed out.Of course they'd intercept us right before the main entrance with another huge pile of merchandising products.Full shopping mode.When we made it outside, Trillian was harshly introduced to Chicago weather and its extreme unpredictability. While a T-shirt had seemed more than enough in the morning sun, Petrus had in the meanwhile done a one-eighty.One look at the Hyde Park Shopping Center sign expressed in numbers, what we had felt right outside the doors of the Museum. 4°C. Fridge temperature.