srah blah blah

Have you been snuffled by a mammoth today?

Andrés, Claude, Renata, and my drugged-up self went on a car trip this afternoon to Vulcania, a museum/learning experience in the middle of the chaîne des puys. It is an enormous place and required more than the three hours we had for it. The subject is volcanoes and it focuses a bit on the puys, but it also touches on other seismic activity and volcanoes all over the world. It reminded me somewhat of Dynamic Earth, minus the lovely narration by John Hannah.

There were many interesting video presentations, including one in 3-D (complete with groovy glasses) showing different eras in the history of the Massif Central. A nice little mammoth stuck his trunk out into the audience and gave us a little sniff and a smile (if mammoths can smile) before suffocating to death under a pile of sudden volcanic ash. The tears streamed down my face, but that was because I was having a coughing fit.

The odd thing about Vulcania is that it's in the middle of nowhere. You come off the autoroute into the park, drive farther in, park, get out, and walk through more nothingness and fields to get to the museum. Then when you get there, it looks like a futuristic shrine to volcanoes. Renata and I have decided that the "museum" is just a cover-up for a Raelian compound.

srah - Saturday, 5 April 2003 - 4:34 PM
Tags: assistantship, auvergne, travel, vulcania

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