JDPFu.com 2025

I got up early today and was on my way to Baltimore by 8:15a to see the Bodies 2 exhibit. After negotiating the ticket purchase (complicated due to the natural museum and IMAX options), I wandered into the main attraction for me – the Bodies.

In short, there’s a German-name sounding scientist who has created a way to replace different fluids in human bodies with plastic. According to the sign at the entry, each of the models in this exhibit understood their body would be plasticized. It begins with a brain, elbow, and knee joints – nothing too shocking. Then you get to a compete man doing a cross like a gymnast. The WHOLE man, just without skin. After getting past the initial shock and feeling good about my parts, I move through the rest of the exhibit with a hand-held audio guide talking about each numbered display. Our German scientist decided that showing the complete bodies just standing there was making them into dummies, so he decided to follow the great masters of painting and place the bodies into different athletic poses. Kicking a soccer ball, ice skating, ballet dancing, and others.

Then there were the individual displays for each organ. A multitude of different brain views, kidneys, stomachs, intestines, bladders, spines, heats, lungs, reproductive organs … everything except skin. Oh, since when was the kidney the largest organ of the body? I was taught that the skin was the largest.

Not for squeamish people. I don’t think I’d take anyone under 18 into this display. The main display that caught my attention was a 72 year old man with a very fit body. They didn’t say what killed him, but his musculature was impressive in a fit way. Also, they said that only bones heal with new bone cells that are exactly the same as the original cells. All other healing is with scar tissue, so your skin, heart, any other body part that has trauma will never be as good as new.

On to the dinosaur area, then the space and astronomy stuff. I catch a Your Sun show in the planetarium. Yawn. After that, I wander the remaining display – DNA and health sciences – it is completely empty. It feels like a child friendly version of The Bodies.

It is a little after 1pm before I leave and head for home. I stop at a random exit to grab some lunch and wander into – what I thought was a Mexican restaurant based on the Spanish name. Turns out it was an Argentine Restaurant! A vey happy accident for me. I order an empanada and a steak sandwich. Both taste similar to what I recall. The empanada has just the right spices and the crust is perfect. The bread used for the steak sandwich is the same as my hamburger at the Puerto Iguazu bus terminal. I chat with the owner – he’s from outside Buenos Aires – very southern barrio to the city. On the satellite tv is the River Plate soccer team.

An half hour later and I’m back on I-95 headed towards DC.