The historical interest of the museum is low, but there is a large glass case with a couple of very ordinary-looking stuffed ducks in it. Another impressive showcase is filled with bits of wire and fuses. The products of our cable factory. Some very peculiar ladies' shoes and some gentlemen's ties of tubular shape are other items which have found their way into the museum, together with still larger busts of political leaders and some quite awful socialist realistic paintings by local painters. In the section of the museum devoted to recent history, there are so many photographs of patriots that one is led to the irreverent conclusion that it is sufficient to help an old comrade across the road to qualify as a hero oneself.
Every face has the staring look which all Balkan museums specialize in.
The patriots appear to have been caught at the moment of being hanged, even if they died in their beds of old age. The heads in these Balkan reproductions invariably seem to meet the necks in the wrong places, whereas the tidiest mustache manages to look like a nosebleed. In another showcase, the visitor is solemnly shown a rusty typewriter, a pair of shoes without laces, a pencil, a bit of string, used by partisans on some undisclosed occasion. They had evidently been mobilized for the occasion, but we were such an exotic-looking crowd that the song died on the children's lips after having gone irredeemably out of tune. Every effort was made to get us out of the town by four fifteen.