The Steampunk Museum is a new one in the city and it really inflamed our curiosity. What exactly can be covered in the museum and how big is it? For certain we can escape the rain but will it be worth it? As we enter we find out it is spread over two floors and we start the bottom one with a guide that points the more interesting things before letting us explore.
And we can explore a lot, you can touch futuristic retro guns, play the mad scientist and look at lots of different objects, some real and some inventions.
There is also a horror element to the exhibits on the ground floor, especially seen with the madhouse patient. Or is something else? You can interpret a few of them in different ways which makes this quite fun.
The second floor leans more heavily into the fiction area with exhibits based on Jules Verne, other science fiction authors and folklore. Here we get another guide, she is quite knowledgeable and involved and it is fun to learn about the different exhibits and what they represent from her.
We have also time to explore a bit the room to look at the many details and meet the artist who is working on a zeppelin in a separate room. It is quite different from other museums we have visited and after the initial awkwardness quite engaging.
Especially interesting is the secret time travel room accessed via pressing the spine of a book in a large book shelf. Really mystery/crime book stuff. Inside you can sit in the time travel machine and travel some time in the future or past, as far as your imagination takes you. And so ends our Cluj visit with the highlight with our trip continuing on towards Hunedoara to visit the famous castle.
