typical sunday
last sunday i went to haarlem to visit a friend. he also kind of inherited my old microwave.
we went to the pest and dolhuys, a museum of madness, which had recently been opened. it really was a psychiatric hospital from the 14th century.
there were isolation rooms. you could stand in one and close the door. there was absolutely no light, some people stayed in there for days. if you weren't crazy you were gonna be!
in a large room they had mannequins which represented well-known Dutch persons who also suffered from manic depressions or schizofrenia. you could listen with a headphone to what they had to say or to what they had made during their illness (music or poems).
there were some computers with psychological tests you could do yourself: rorschach ink blot test, borderline test, szondi test etcetera. of course we took them and we turned out to be quite normal.
the last room was the largest in which you had to put on a stethoscope to listen to extra information told by a patient or psychiatrist. next to the material was a little stand where you lay your stethoscope. it takes the visitor through psychiatry during 700 years. that was a bit too much and it was very crowded. so we only listened to some.
but when you're the least interested i could recommend it to you. it's not a very usual museum, you can touch things...
