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Dead babies
Ahem, well gents here goes. Our little story of how a 13 year old boy found himself in a room surrounded by lots of dead babies, infants and animals whilst not at war, nor in a war zone.

Are you ready? then we'll begin...

It was the mid 1980's and I was all about being a moody 13 year old both by losing myself in the latest album by the fat boys - 'coming back hard again'anyone?! lol. And by being a traditional grumpy teenager. My parents decided that me and my older brother really needed a bonding holiday to Austria where we could walk, see culture and visit historic places and generally have a 'great' time as a family. I had an obsession with knives at the time (didn't you at that age?) and my brother had an obsession, in fact he had many but his most obsessively obsessed obsessive obsession was for gore.

(long story short time methinks)

Other then a mistachio'd pot bellied bloke emergerging from Lake Wolfgang with a 'Guten Morgen!!' whilst his little johnson waved at family 'Jamin not much of interest had happened. Then on one of our last days on said holiday we were persuaded by my brother to visit a local museum, all good think mum and dad, all boring thinks I.

Other then usual stuff on the lower floors, the top floor of this run-of-the-mill-isn't-history GREAT museum was intriguing.....there was a black curtain across the door and a sign (in Austrian, or is that German?) with a lot of BIG letters with underlining and everything. We could tell it was a warning of some sort. My brother walked straight in before parents could stop him..........

He came back 2 seconds later with a thousand yard stare 'come in it's great!' he said (probably)

I held back the curtain and entered...........

Behind the curtain was a room full dozens of huge glass jars, inside of which appeared to be stuffed toys and animals, all of which were deformed or disfigured in someway. Babies with too many limbs, babies with not enough limbs, cats with three heads, dogs with no legs, babies with deformed half formed siamese twins but most of all were row upon row of babies with HUGE heads, some were huge but squished flat as if there was nothing inside,some were just plain big and all were wrinkled and very, very milky white in colour (ouch just had a few images returning to me after over 20 years)

All well and good thought I, and I presumed it to be a load of models of still born and terminated off spring to demonstrate the extremes of what can be given birth to.

It was as we walked away from the museum that it hit me 'hehe' said gore loving older brother 'can't believe mum and dad let us see that' 'what do you mean?' said I.

Cue ear to ear grin from my brother, yes they were real alright. Hundreds and hundreds of dead babies, all pickled and preserved.

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!

I stopped eating pickled onions very shortly after that.
(Fri 29th Feb 2008, 21:57, More)