I can’t say this blog has been to Estonia before, but when the largest collection of toys in the Baltic States calls out to you, well, you can’t pass that shit up. The Tartu Toy Museum (Tartu Mänguasjamuuseum..say that ten times fast) has over 5,000 toys on display in one of the oldest wooden buildings in town (dating back to 1770s, kids). The exhibits are divided into various sections over two floors: “Toys of City Children”, “Toys of Farm Children”, “Paper Toys”, “20th Century Toys”, “Outdoor Toys”, “Handicraft and Artist Made Toys”, “Boys’ Toys”, “Dolls and Toys of the World”, and “Estonian Toy Manufacturers”. Don’t ask me why there isn’t a Girls’ Section…we’re always second class citizens, I guess, even when it comes to freakin’ toys. Upstairs there is a dwarf house and playroom, while outside sits an old medieval house that is a separate museum full of old Estonian puppets. There is also another building, which puts on live theatre shows. Oh, and let’s not forget the museum’s official mascot, Karu Lillekäpp aka Teddy Flower-paw, who has her own books, postcards and has appeared on many television shows. Her name comes from the national folk costume skirt that is usually made out of a flower-patterned cloth. I bet you didn’t know about that toy, which is popular all over the country.
The Easter Egg museum in Kolomyia, Ukraine.
The House of Terror, Budapest.
The Museum of Socialist Art in Sofia exhibits some 77 sculptures, 60 paintings and 25 smaller plastic art works created between 1945 and 1989 by the most renowned sculptors and painters of the time.
Mostly commissioned by the regime for propaganda purposes, the collection contains numerous full-length statues, busts, heads and portraits of the Soviet Union’s founding father Vladimir Lenin, Bulgaria’s first communist leader Georgy Dimitrov and long-ruling dictator Todor Zhivkov.
Other works glorify the life of the working classes and the feats of the partisan movement that brought communism to Bulgaria in 1944.
“It was high time to put that era where it belongs - in a museum,” Culture Minister Vezhdi Rashidov said at the opening.
