Breaking up is never easy, they say, but in Zagreb it’s the subject of a whole museum. This may sound bizarre, but the angst and distress that comes with finding that your loved one is just not that into you anymore has actually become the topic someone has been able to make into an entire tourism attraction. What this may say about the founder’s state of mind is a matter of debate, but anyone staying at a luxury hotel in Zagreb will be surprised at just how fascinating it is.
The museum originated as a travelling exhibition based on the concept of relationship failures. It then morphed into a permanent museum. If it sounds like the ultimate exercise in self-pity and failures to move on, visitors may be intrigued to find that is not what it is about at all. Regarding traditional self-help methods of moving on from broken relationships as being inferior, it offers a new approach, using creativity and the chance to contribute to the museum’s collection as a means of overcoming an emotional trauma. Clothes, phones, love hearts, even pink, fluffy handcuffs – it’s all here. Thus the museum displays a wide array of personal belongings, all given up as something approaching a kind of ceremony missing in society: for while there are marriages, funerals and graduation ceremonies, there is no such thing as a ritual marking the collapse of a relationship.
Indeed, by displaying this collection of items representing now-dead relationships, the museum hopes to generate the sense in visitors that there is a bit more to life than misery and suffering – like, perhaps, a more fulfilling and enduring relationship around the corner. Visitors can enjoy a drink and some food in the broken ship coffee shop at the end, with some soft music, mulled wine and traditional Croatian pepper cookies to make everyone feel better. This is a museum that is definitely worth visiting, and it won the Kenneth Hudson Award for the most innovative museum in Europe in 2011. Whether you should go there with your other half, however, is a question nobody can answer.
