USA: Trip to Seattle V

Seattle is divided to several main districts. In every one of them something interesting happens all the time. Lower Queen Anne is important mostly because the famous Space Needle and Experience Music Project are located there.

The museum was established in 2000 by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft. The goal of the museum is to be a memory of ideas creating contemporary popular culture. Before you enter the museum don’t forget to buy your ticket at http://www.empmuseum.org/. It will cost you about 20 % less, so basically it is difference of 5 dollars.

When you see EMP for the first time you will wonder about its architecture. Or maybe you will hate it. Depends on what you like. The building it self has very distinct characteristic and I would say that its design matches well its purpose.

Perhaps, you like me will encounter two old rockers when you will go to pick your tickets. They seemed to be on a place somewhere else. They still told me something about that I should put my umbrella to some plastic bag and this then to my backpack because otherwise it would be considered a security threat.

A looked at my small umbrella that even doesn’t have pointy end and I followed their instructions. Well, at least I might finally go explore the museum.

The first thing that pleasantly surprised me was its originality. In the time when I visited the EMP, there were additional exhibitions of horror and fantasy. In the halls deoted to fantasy you could see various costumes used in famous movies, short documentary videos as well as manuscripts of such authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and of many others.

The horror movie exhibition is located in the museum’s basement. Bedore you enter you have to go through another magnificent exhibition of science fiction. If you like this genre as I do you soon lost track of time. There are many costumes, stage properties and information on classic sci-fi works.

Some references you will know better because many of movies were also broadcasted in the Czech Republic. Fans of Star Trek can see an armchair in which captain Kirk used to sit in the original series. Unfortunately, it is not allowed to sit in it. You can see from up close a metal skull of Cameron’s Terminator or you can explore the hall of fame of the most famous authors of science-fiction.

In the next article you will learn more about the EMP museum.

Text/photo: Maxim Kucer