Earlier this November, I had a chance to visit my family in Kiev, Ukraine. The last and only time I returned to my country of birth was 12 years ago in 2004, when I was a college student. From Cairo, Kiev is only about a five-hour flight so I knew I had to take advantage of the proximity.
During the week, my mom (hi, Cascadian Val!) and I stayed with my aunt and uncle and their three children. One of our tourist outings was to the small town of Pirogovo (Pyrohiv) outside of Kiev to see the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine.
According to the introductory sign when we entered, the open air museum contains an outstanding collection of traditional Ukrainian farmsteads of the 1960s-1970s representing every region of Ukraine. We walked from one region to another.
To the left, there is an Orthodox church, the Dniprov region and the Carpathian region. To the right, is the singing field and mid-20th century village.
Each area has a different type of architecture reflecting the climate of the area—Polissia, Carpathian Mountains, Western forests, Central forests, Eastern forests and Southern Ukraine. In total, there are 47 homes or structures that were reconstructed post-war and brought to this museum. Some of the structures include the main residences, garages, summer kitchens, barns, sheds, cellars, storehouses, chicken coops, wells, etc.
The green-domed Zarubincy village church is from the Cherkassy region and was built in 1742.
Construction of the buildings on the museum territory was carried out by local craftsmen from the regions in order to preserve building features authentic to each place. All of the structures are located along a central road, depicting the appearance of a traditional street in post-war, Socialist Ukraine.
This 19th century home has kalyna hung over the doorway. Kalyna is a red berry similar to cranberries and is a national symbol of Ukraine.A sign explaining the origins of the home. The home and a kalyna tree are in the background.We were able to see into the interior of some of the homes. This is the kitchen and main living area. It has the traditional red embroidered linens and flowers and herbs drying on the walls.A caretaker sweeps the front of one of the village homes. This one had a fresh wheat thatched roof.More village houses with thatched roofs.
As we walked around, we spotted some snack stands, beer gardens and restaurants. Admittedly, in November, there was not a lot of activity. My aunt says that it is a very popular place to come in the summer with a picnic. There are many festivals and weddings held on the museum grounds. You can also rent a bike and ride through each of the villages.
The restaurant “Shynok” boasts home-cooked meals.Some of the grab and go snacks.The “Baltika” beer garden.
On top one of the hills, near the “Carpathian region,” stand several windmills.
View of all the windmills on the hilltop.This windmill reminded me of the story “Baba Yaga,” a Slavic folktale about a witch who lives in a chicken-legged hut.
It was a fun day spent wandering through the grounds from one village to another. My mom and aunt reminisced about what their parents and grandparents house looked like during this time. At the end of the trip, my mom said this was one of her favorite experiences.
Can you guess what these are? My aunt says they are bee hives.The last of the fall flowers and foliage.Dasvidaniya (goodbye) until next time!
I had a three-day weekend due to the Islamic New Year on Sunday, October 2 so I decided to take advantage of the time off and head out to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, or the Egyptian Museum, in downtown Cairo. The coral building is easily recognizable in the famous Tahrir Square, the site of the 2011 Revolution protests.
View from the side of the museum and its gardens. Can you spot the Cairo Tower?
I hired a guide and I’m glad I did; the museum is a jumble and maze of mostly unmarked artifacts. It’s not the most organized or clean or secure museum I’ve ever been to—thousand-year-old stuff is strewn throughout rooms with signs that essentially say, do not lean on or touch the priceless tomb/statue/carving. But people do. The concept is very culturally Egyptian—proud but lackadaisical.
Entrance ticket is about $8.50 and to take photos, $5.50.
What it lacks in interpretation and modernity, it makes up for in dusty coolness factor. The museum is made up of items collected from various pyramids, including the entire collection of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Wikipedia says it has more than 120,000 items, not counting the ones that were gifted to Austria and other countries.
The main hall of the ground floor. I hope nothing falls over!
We started on the first floor (ground floor) with the collection from the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. First, I saw the statue of King Djoser (Zoser), who built the world’s first stone step pyramid, which I had previously visited in Saqqara. The statue was collected from his pyramid and features the life-size (small!) king with the false chin.
King Djoser.
Next, we headed through the main hall to see a stone pyramid top, or the Benben stone from the Pyramid of Amenemhat III. The pyramid below it has since crumbled, but the carved capstone or tip remains.
Guide Asmaa next to the capstone carved with a phoenix bird, which is a part of an ancient creation story.
At the end of the hall is a colossal statue of Amenhotep III and his wife, Tiye, grandparents of the famous Tutankhamun. This statue is significant because it’s the first time a woman was depicted as the same giant size as her husband. Notice the size of their daughters at their feet. I later saw Tiye’s eerie mummy (see a photo on Wikipedia), complete with hair in the mummy room (no pictures allowed and that’s fine by me).
Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.
We headed to check out the artifacts surrounding King Amenhotep IV, who was the first pharaoh who decided to worship only one God. His story was featured on Morgan Freeman’s “Story of God” series (go DVR it right now). The show features the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians and the turn to a monotheistic (one God) worship by this king. He later changed his name to Akhenaten to include the name of the God Aten, or “sun.” Unfortunately, he became somewhat of a religious tyrant and his followers scratched out his name in his coffin so that his spirit would NOT return in the afterlife. His successor returned to a polytheistic rule.
Akhenaten’s wooden coffin found in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. Look at the middle strip of the coffin. Can you see where the cartouche, or the symbols for his name, has been scratched out?
The second floor houses the pieces of the famous kings and more solid gold bling. Namely, all of the 5,000 things that a boy king Tutankhamun could ever want for the afterlife. We saw his gold ceremonial chair, three funerary beds (in case he wanted to bounce from bed to bed, I guess) and four shrine gold boxes that held his sarcophagus and death mask.
Click any photo in the gallery to see a larger version and start a slideshow view
The third bed has a crying lion, grief stricken by his king’s death.
The wooden throne of Tutankhamun features an image of him under the sun (‘Aten’ for his birth name Tutankhaten) while his queen applies perfume on him.
The first funerary bed of Tutankhamun has a pair of cows.
The second bed featured the heads of hippopotamuses.
One of King Tut’s outer golden coffins decorated with lapis lazuli and turquoise.
Due to all of the grave robbing, precautionary measures were taken to hide the body within the layers of gold coffins. I guess it didn’t matter too much because the location of his tomb was lost, not to be found until the famous discovery in 1922.
I also saw the museum’s masterpiece, the famous gold and colored mask of King Tut with the long false chin. It is 24 lbs. of solid gold. Alas, no pictures were allowed.
I hope to return again and explore the museum more on my own.
Who would have guessed one of the coolest things we’d see in Hiroshima is a corporate car museum? Unbeknownst to us, Hiroshima is home of the Mazda Motor Corporation’s world headquarters and the company offers free tours of its in-house museum and assembly line.
Mazda World Headquarters in Hiroshima along the Enko River
The multi-story gray office building isn’t overly impressive from the outside. Inside, the lobby shines with that showroom look you’d find at most auto dealers. The 2016 model cars are all on display in the showroom; the new tire smell permeates the air and takes me back to my days washing cars at the Honda dealership the summer before college.
The 2016 Mazda Miata Roadster
The waiting tourists ooh and ahh over the cars, each coated in Mazda’s sexy Soul Red paint job. Details about each vehicle are projected onto the floor, giving the experience a high-tech feeling. Everyone wants to take a turn sitting in the sleek 2016 Mazda Miata Roadster.
We’re told we’ll be taking a bus to the museum. It turns out the drab gray office building is just the trailhead to the main event.
On the bus to the museum. We shortly learned that no photos were allowed on the bus or in the factory, so technically this is an illegal selfie.
Our guide gave a quick overview in English as we made the five-or-so minute trip to the museum entrance. The headquarters and factory are a small town within a town, complete with apartments for employees and its own private bridge crossing over the Enko River.
Some of Mazda’s original models, including one of its first pickup trucks and the Familia, the forerunner of the Mazda Protege
We watched a short film on the history of the company. Mazda started out as Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd in 1920, a struggling manufacturer of artificial cork. Jujiro Matsuda, Mazda’s founder and a wealthy water pump magnate, took over management of the company and turned its focus toward tool manufacturing.
The Mazda-go was the company’s first vehicle and changed Mazda’s focus from tool manufacturing to vehicle manufacturing.
In 1931, the company now known as Toyo Kogyo released its first vehicle, a three-wheeled motorcycle with a truck bed called the Mazda-go. It was sold under the Mitsubishi name and featured a unique combination of the Mazda name over the Mitsubishi three-diamond logo on its gas tank. The success of the trike sent the company down a new path—vehicle manufacturing.
After the end of World War II, Toyo Kogyo played a major role in the rebuilding of Hiroshima; its own factory heavily damaged by the bomb. The appearance of the Mazda-go around town in the days after the bombing was a boon to the city’s morale.
Over the years, the company continued to produce new vehicles with the Mazda branding, but it didn’t officially change its name to “Mazda” until 1984.
The plaid seats of the 1978 RX-7
The 787B won the 24 Hours of LeMans race in 1991, the first and only Japanese manufacturer to win the race
The future of Mazda—its electric and hydrogen-powered concept vehicles
An example of Mazda’s stamping process shows the steps from a piece of sheet metal to the molded finish on the actual vehicle
Mazda’s Hydrogen Rotary Engine powers its hydrogen/gasoline hybrid vehicles
Our favorite part of the museum was one of the places photography was strictly prohibited—the factory floor. The massive assembly line pumped out vehicle after vehicle, using a combination of robots and humans to accomplish individual tasks. Dashboards were installed at one station and the windshield at the next. Large claws—like you’d find in a arcade UFO Catcher game—lifted the vehicles to another station where the engine would be raised into the vehicle from below.
I could have stayed there all day, impressed more by the amount of engineering that went into designing the assembly line itself than the vehicles it was building.
The small-scale clay version of the CX-series crossover SUV
A clay model of the interior of the CX-series crossover
A full-scale plastic model of the CX-series crossover, built to get a good look at the vehicle’s aesthetics before production begins.
Back in the museum, we saw some of the artifacts of the design process. Once a vehicle design concept has been created, clay artists build scale models of both the interior and exterior. Once the design is approved, a full-scale plastic version is created, giving a better sense of some of the manufacturing issues that might be encountered.
Just before returning to the bus, we were taken to a window overlooking Mazda’s private port. We saw massive parking garages outside, full of recently-completed cars and SUVs. They’d be driven onto the waiting ships in the port to be taken to other parts of Japan as well as overseas. If you drive a Mazda, there’s a good chance it started its life right here in Hiroshima.
A map of Mazda’s factory campus in Hiroshima
Visiting the Museum
Reservations to visit the museum can be made online up to a year in advance, but we made ours just a couple days before. The tours only run Monday-Friday and the English tour starts at 10 a.m. The museum is easily reached by train from Hiroshima Station.
If you can’t make it all the way to Hiroshima, Mazda has partnered with Google to make parts of the tour available via Google Street View. You can see the Entrance Hall, the History wing, the Rotary Engine wing and the Technology/Future wings of the museum. Alas, to see the best part of the tour—the assembly line—you’ll have to visit in person.
