Visiting a Working World Exhibition

The shop couldn’t squeeze my car in to check what’s wrong with the horn this morning, but I got an appointment for Thursday morning. Fine by me, so I changed my plans and visited a museum today instead of Thursday. Bro2 recommended it from the many museums/exhibitions that are included in the special costumer card of the tourism agency of my metropolitan area. I got the card as christmas present last year (it’s valid for a year) and hardly used it so far, which is kind of pathetic. So I’m trying to do a bit more with it in the last few weeks of 2013.

I went to the DASA museum in Dortmund, which is a working world exhibition. It has a lot of interesting items and actually work place situation on display, historical and modern ones. Quite a few things can be tried out in real or in a simulation, which was especially interesting for the young students who were there on a field trip. Steering a 13-wheeler through urban traffic for instance.
The exhibition included all kinds of workplaces of urban / industrial times, so there was no farming on display or anything. But the world of printing and news agencies from the early days. Traffic and Energy and Medicine and all that. It was really interesting to see.

printshopWhile I was looking at old printing presses (none from the 18th century unfortunately) and letter boxes and all that, of course I was reminded of A. Malcolm’s printshop in Carefax Close, Edinburgh in 1766 ;-) . I obviously have Outlander on my mind 24/7 these days and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I blame the wonderful world of the Internet and especially Twitter where all the nice folks from the Outlander team (cast & crew) are sharing this journey with us fans from all over the world.

They had a special exhibition (site in German only) about risks at work or better about jobs that come with a lot of risks. Starting with sportsmen who after an injury can quickly lose their ability to do their job over people who work high up on scaffoldings or the lumbermen felling large trees to the men and women in the policeforce.
One of the guards seemed to be a bit bored ;-), because he came over asking if I had tried out the various items on exhibition and started explaining stuff to me. I wouldn’t have asked for details, but it was really nice nonetheless. So I tried on various bulletproofvests and after that learned a lot about the work of the bomb squads or to be more precise about bomb disposal of unexploded ordnance (UXO). There are still thousands of UXO from WWII buried all over Germany, especially in the big cities which were bombed the most frequently in WWII. In fact just a week ago, a 1.5 tonne bomb had to be uncovered and defused in Dortmund, where this museum is located. Several neighbourhoods with all in all 20.000 people had to be evacuated and it was a big deal. Bigger than usual, because each day several WWII bombs are uncovered and defused all over Germany, without making headline news.

So, that part was educational and up-to-date, but sadly enough so was the other part of the exhibition about medics (Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross etc.) helping out in natural disaster / post-war or other kind of catastrophy enviroment. I watched one of the interviews clips with a male nurse who was working in Africa for a few weeks, while there still was some war action going on. These people are doing such an important job and sometimes they are risking their lives and it’s admirable and impressive.

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