With one of the biggest drinking nights of the year coming next week (New Years Eve), it seems appropriate that a "Museum of Hangovers" has thrown open its doors to people in Croatia.
The museum, which opened on Dec. 1, isn't a shrine to the trio of movies starring Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis, but instead, it's a place where people can showcase the objects and stories of their drunken escapades from around the world.
The museum is the brainchild of Rino Dubokovic, a university student studying computer science in Zagreb. He says he came up with the idea during what else? A boozy night out with friends.
Dubokovic says he and his friends were swapping their funniest hangover stories when he was suddenly struck by an idea: "Some sort of collection where all these objects from drunk stories would be exposed together with their stories."
Less than six months later, the museum dedicated to the "fun" side of alcohol-fueled nights opened next door to the spot where Dubokovic came up with The Museum of Hangovers. Roberta Mikelic, who opened the museum with Dubokovic, said they wanted to display objected collected from people who woke up without any knowledge of where they came from.
Visitors to the museum can even add their own contributions, including one exhibit that invites patrons to finish the sentence "I woke up with..." on a chalkboard. Some of the contributions have included: "Two stray dogs," "My ex," and even "a lot of pumpkins."
Dubokovic says he came up with the idea for the museum after a friend told him about waking up hungover with a bicycle pedal in his pocket.
“I thought, as I listened to him, why not set up a place, a museum, with a collection of these objects and stories that will illustrate in a funny way these evenings of drunkenness and the hangover the next day,” he said.
The museum isn't meant to glorify the drunken escapades, but instead represent the type of conversations he had with friends bonding over their shared silliness from the past. He says they also plan on showcasing the dangers of binge drinking and blacking out in the future.
"In the future, we want to make people aware of the bad things related to alcohol," he adds.
The museum offers several interactive exhibits, including on in which people are offered a glass of brandy and then invited to try and play darts while wearing goggles that simulate the effects of getting drunk.
The Museum of Hangovers isn't the first off-beat museum to open their doors in Croatia, in 2010, a couple who'd broken up opened the "Museum of Broken Relationships," which encouraged visitors to donate objects related to their romantic breakups. The concept proved to be so popular, a second location was opened in Los Angeles in 2016.
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