Updated and new chapters, book review and travels

Hello subscribers – and welcome new ones!

No new Blog posts to announce this time (I’ve been too busy with other things), but I’ve substantially updated the chapter on my main website about the famous Josephinum here in Vienna. It’s one of the world’s most significant medical museums, thanks in large part to its unique and extensive collection of medical wax models. Much of the chapter is basically a complete rewrite. This was warranted by the lengthy refurbishment and expansion this museum had gone through over a period of several years until its reopening in the autumn of 2022. And last summer I finally managed to revisit the place and take new photos, but only recently got around to writing up this update. Do go and take a look – especially at the photo gallery (but be warned, some are quite gruesome). The photo above was taken from that gallery and shows one of my personal favourite exhibits in the Josephinum: a whole-body wax model of a “sleeping beauty” (though her eyes are wide open) with long hair and a pearl necklace (!) – whose chest and abdomen are open so you see the organs (some have been removed).

At the beginning of this month I accompanied my wife and a group of friends on a weekend trip to Copenhagen. And while the others went to a sauna complex (not my thing), I took myself off to visit the Krigsmuseet, aka the Danish War Museum, which I had not managed to see on my first visit to Copenhagen last year – reported in this Blog Post – so I was now able to fill that gap also on my main website. Also worth a look.

And just yesterday I uploaded a detailed and substantial review of a new book on dark tourism, by the same author whose first book on the topic I had also reviewed and found to be outstanding. So my expectations were high. My verdict in short: some of those expectations have been met, but my opinion of this new book is a bit more divided than was the case with its predecessor, and some of the conclusions in it I really struggle to go along with. I’m always suspicious of conspiracies being claimed. Also the focus of the new book is much narrower (Holocaust- and UK-centric), so it’s perhaps of less interest to an international globe-trotting dark tourist. But for Brits or those (like myself) with a close connection to the UK, the book offers a wealth of thought-provoking insights and inferences, often quite political and rather critical.
  

Soon I’ll go travelling again, but this time primarily in order to visit family. But the odd dark-tourism bit may be slotted in afterwards when we’re in Hamburg and Berlin (for the umpteenth time). We’ll see.

The next Newsletter (or Blog posts) will have to wait until I’m back.

Until then, all the best,

Peter