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Agence France-Presse

A new museum of laughter is offering to put people through the spinner to wash away the negativity of modern life.
Visitors to the HaHaHouse in the Croatian capital Zagreb are blasted with a puff of white smoke once they step inside to blow away their worries before climbing into a “giant washing machine”.
The “centrifuge of life” then whips them away, Willy Wonka-style, down a twisting slide into a pool filled with little white balls where their journey to a happier place starts.
Its creator, Andrea Golubic, said she had the idea for the museum during the Covid-19 pandemic when many were feeling down, depressed and isolated.

“I realised that I had a mission – to heal people with laughter,” added the upbeat 43-year-old.
The idea “came straight from the heart, and on that very day I listed 78 exhibits … that’s how the HaHaHouse began”.
Golubic said it was her carefree seven-year-old self that inspired her – “a picture of me as a first-grader, with wide teeth and dying of laughter. I was constantly joking as a kid”, she said.
Visitors press a button to be “disinfected from negativity” as soon as they step inside the museum, which has eight interactive zones.
One has a rubber chicken choir cheerfully cackling out hits like Abba’s “Dancing Queen”, there is a karaoke room with distorted voices and a “Sumo Arena” for wrestling in puffed up costumes.

There is also some serious history of humour from ancient to modern times, told through theatre, film or online.
The museum also explains humour styles, from wordplay, slapstick, toilet and dark humour to satire with the help of some choice one-liners.
“I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware,” is one of the featured zingers from US comedian Joan Rivers.
Golubic said the HaHaHouse is drawing everyone from small children to the elderly, with grown-ups seeing it as a good excuse to play at being kids again themselves.
“All those who still feel a bit of childish joy and embrace their inner child will recharge themselves,” she insisted.

Pensioner Bruno Dadic said he was “delighted” by his visit “as there is never enough humour in life. Laughter is a medicine for the soul,” he said.
Zagreb’s psychiatric hospital has voiced interest in organised visits and links are also being made with schools and retirement homes.
“The museum is great,” said Aleksandar Suka, who celebrated his fifth birthday with a visit.
Accompanied by his mother, the little boy said he loved lying on the “bed of nails” since they tickled him.

Singer Zorica Bucic, from the coastal town of Split, said the museum was perfect for our times “when we are bombarded with so much bad news”.
“Entering here is like entering childhood, being relieved of all problems. If you could come here more there would be no need to pay a psychologist,” she said.
Indeed, laughter is a defence mechanism which gives people strength to face their problems, psychologist Petar Kraljevic said, saying he loved the idea too.
“If a prescription for three hours of laughter per 24 hours could be written and followed that would certainly give positive results.”


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Healing power of laughter was the spark for museum that’s filled with it

Visitors in fat suits fight in the sumo arena at the HaHaHouse museum of laughter in Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: AFP

Andrea Golubic inside a pool full of small white balls at the HaHaHouse museum of laughter, which she founded in central Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: AFP

Museum founder Andrea Golubic (left) in the lobby of the HaHaHouse museum of laughter, in central Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: AFP

Zorica Bucic, a visitor from Split, Croatia, sings in the karaoke room at the HaHaHouse museum of laughter. Photo: AFP

A man sits on a “fart machine” at the museum. Photo: AFP

A woman on the “bed of nails” at the museum of laughter, in Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: AFP

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Health & Wellness

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Sumo fights in fat suits, distorted karaoke and choir of rubber chickens among attractions at museum that plays on laughter’s healing power


Sumo fights in fat suits, distorted karaoke and choir of rubber chickens among attractions at museum that plays on laughter’s healing power.


Croatia

Offbeat