We stumbled upon a museum in Rivne by chance-- Краэзнавчий Музей. For about $1, we got to wander around rooms and rooms of intriguing and quite random stuff having to do with the city of Rivne. There was incredible amounts of historical stuff-- from traditional tools and dress of the peasants hundreds of years ago to more recent WWII memorabilia, such as military uniforms and an entire wall of handwritten letters written by and to soldiers. There were rooms dedicated to geology and wildlife of the area, complete with stuffed animals and skeletons.
The museum was not very polished, professional, and crowded like big, famous museums... but rather a little dusty, mystical, and random. Ukraine has been one of my favorite places to visit museums for this reason.
It's incredible to me that a small, pretty insignificant city in Ukraine can have so much history. Rivne was first mentioned as an inhabited city in 1283. You can't find a city in the US with history past the 1600s.
I could travel the world if only to learn history and nothing else. It is so fulfilling to know more about the world and the people of the past who made it what it is today.
- Julia
