Koerperwelten

Yesterday there wasn't anything I could help with in the bedroom, so I took the train to Brussels to check out Body Worlds (or Koerperwelten in it's original German). Andy wasn't really interested in seeing it, so it was the perfect afternoon excursion for me. It was in the Cellars of Cureghem. Photos are not allowed in the exhibit so you'll have to check out what they have on the website, but there was an enormous market above the cellars, complete with Pony-Go-Round and cheap panties:

It was one of the biggest markets I've seen. Clothes, shoes, jewelry, linens, small appliances, produce, kebab stands, etc. I actually got lost trying to find the entrance to the exhibit, which turned out to be on the other side of the equally huge meat market. I swear the whole thing was at least a square mile.

As for the exhibit, it was great!! Besides the full figures in various poses, they had smaller exhibits for all systems of the body. So I saw brains and hearts and lungs and kidneys and spleens and livers, both healthy and diseased.

There was a full digestive tract, as well as a full nervous system (the large nerves, of course) laid out flat and pinned. Also, lots of preserved cross sections of things, including whole torsos. There were fetuses from 6 weeks up to 9 months and a gorilla that was freaking huge. You could fit a baby in it's large intestine.

There were only a couple of the full figures that made me feel a little queasy. At first glance they were splayed out like some kind of horror movie (and they all have eyes), but on closer inspection they were really interesting and lost their gruesomeness.

And now I know what you look like on the inside. :)