The World's Strangest Museums

Deutsches Currywurst Museum

Berlin, Germany

Welcome to a whole different kind of sausage party. If you think it'd be hard to make a museum entirely about curried tube meat, you're obviously not German. This destination, opened in 2009 and dedicated to Deutschland's most ubiquitous street food, is loaded with historical memorabilia and interactive exhibits. Step right up to a spice-sniffing station, pose inside a life-size curry-mobile, or just chill on a sausage-shaped sofa. Guided tours, now offered in English, last about 45 minutes, and no visit is complete without a stop by the currywurst snack bar.

          
 

The Mütter Museum

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia houses one of the world's premiere medical museums, stuffed to the gills with nightmarish curios. We're talking swollen colons, slices of brain, bones ravaged by venereal disease, faces in jars, baby skeletons, arcane medical equipment, and one spine-chilling skull collection. Take your time reading all those creepy info cards: The museum's airy, library-like setting encourages lingering.

           

The Bunny Museum

Pasadena, California

Laugh all you want (Elijah Wood sure did in this Funny or Die spot), but Candace Frazee and Steve Lubanski's dizzying collection of rabbit paraphernalia is awe-inspiring. No matter where you turn in their modest home, a lapin stares you down: The toiletries, kitchenware, furniture, and light fixtures are all bunny-themed. There are famous rabbits (Bugs, Brer, Peter Cottontail) and regular-Joe rabbits, but no Monty Python killer-bunny types. Tours are free (just bring some fresh veggies for the couple's pet bunnies, please) and by appointment only; you'll know you've arrived at the right house when you spot the giant bush manicured in the shape of a rabbit.

     

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices

St. Paul, Minnesota

Once a standalone museum run by the late Bob McCoy and now an essential addition to the Science Museum of Minnesota, the MQMD focuses on medical quackery and health fraud in the 20th century. All told there are more than 250 devices here, including a phrenological psychograph (a machine that determines one's personality by the lumps on their skull), foot-powered breast-enlarging pump, "weight-loss" soap, and a violet-ray machine sold as a cure-all for everything from heart disease to hand cramps. That the general public was so gullible may seem shocking now, but it's fun to imagine what gimmicky things are being sold to us today that could easily join this collection 50 years from now.
    

The Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum

Plano, Texas

Exterminator Michael Bohdan may kill bugs for a living, but he doesn't just flush their bodies down the toilet. His Pest Shop is home to dozens of "roach art" displays: among them, "Liberoachi" dressed in sparkles and seated at a miniature piano, "Normal Roachwell" painting a picture on a little easel, and a "Cockroach Dundee" hat whose brim is lined with dead roaches in lieu of crocodile teeth. Blattodephobes take note: Curator Bohdan also stores a basket crawling with more than 500 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in the museum; you can pet one if you're feeling especially masochistic.
    

Museum of Bad Art

Dedham, Massachusetts

Exactly what it sounds like. Since 1994, Michael Frank has taken a gallerista-serious (but also tongue-in-cheek) approach to collecting and curating heinous art, much of it thankfully anonymous. A rotating selection of 25 or so pieces is always on display in the basement of the Dedham Community Theater; this includes portraiture, landscapes, still lifes, nudes, and pictures so awful that they defy categorization.
 

Siriraj Medical Museum

Bangkok, Thailand

Consider it Southeast Asia's answer to the Mutter Museum. This macabre medical collection, located inside the frenzied Siriraj Hospital about a 40-minute taxi ride from downtown, explores pathology, parasitology, forensics, and other specialty areas with stomach-churning explicitness. Embalmed fetuses and full-body cadavers are par for the course, so use caution if traveling with kids.
      

Texas Prison Museum

Huntsville, Texas

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of capital punishment, a visit to this Lone Star institution will prove educational. The modest collection houses detailed inmate carvings, confiscated contraband (you dirty shank, you!), and a retired electric chair (built by prison inmates and darkly nicknamed Old Sparky). If you're lucky, museum director Jim Willett will be on hand to answer questions; the former prison warden oversaw numerous executions at Huntsville's infamous Walls Unit before heading up the TPM.

   

Gopher Hole Museum

Torrington, Alberta, Canada

Passers-through can gawk at dozens of elaborate dioramas featuring taxidermied gophers at this bizarro roadside attraction: Hey, there's a gopher working in the blacksmith shop…a gopher going to church…a gopher robbing a bank…a gopher at the beauty salon…a gopher jamming out with his jug band. So on and so forth. Artist Shelly Haase is the creative brains behind the collection, which opened in 1996 and quickly drew the ire of PETA activists. Fortunately for Haase and her little stuffed children, the museum fits right in: Gophers here are local celebrities; even the town's fire hydrants are painted to resemble the Caddyshack nemesis.
   

Leila's Hair Museum

Independence, Missouri

Fashioning artwork from human hair was quite the fad in the 19th century—just ask Leila Cohoon. The retired cosmetologist started collecting antique hair in 1949 and has since amassed some 2,000 hair artifacts, including shadow boxes, watch fobs, bracelets, and wreaths woven from human locks and hung on the wall in vintage frames. Interested in learning more? The museum moonlights as the national headquarters for the Victorian Hairwork Society.

    

Shinyokohama Raumen Museum

Yokohama, Japan

This ramen museum, established in 1994, claims to be the world's first food-themed amusement park. The floor plan is split in two: One area functions as a ramen mini-mall where you can sample a rotating selection of the best soup noodles from throughout the country (e.g. Eki from Hokkaido); the other is an exacting life-size reproduction of downtown Tokyo circa 1958, the year instant ramen was invented. Staff dress in period garb, vintage billboards decorate the walls, and Jeopardy-worthy ramen trivia plasters every placard.
   

Mister Ed's Elephant Museum

Orrtanna, Pennsylvania

Miss Ellie Phant, a giant robotic pachyderm, chats up visitors in the parking lot at this quirky rural museum. Inside, they can marvel at Mister Ed's astounding collection, which includes thousands of elephant figurines, as well as an elephant blowdryer and elephant potty chair. The property, which reopened earlier this year following a devastating fire that wiped out more than 2,000 collectibles, is littered with photo-worthy paraphernalia. Fresh-roasted peanuts and old-timey candy are available in the on-site gift shop.
   
Miss Ellie Phant, a giant robotic pachyderm, chats up visitors in the parking lot at this quirky rural museum. Inside, they can marvel at Mister Ed's astounding collection, which includes thousands of elephant figurines, as well as an elephant blowdryer and elephant potty chair. The property, which reopened earlier this year following a devastating fire that wiped out more than 2,000 collectibles, is littered with photo-worthy paraphernalia. Fresh-roasted peanuts and old-timey candy are available in the on-site gift shop.
 

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Husavik, Iceland

Male genitalia is front and center at this tiny museum, located in a remote corner of northern Iceland. More than 100 penile and testicular specimens are on display, including the units of polar bears, seals, walruses, dolphins, whales, goats, foxes, guinea pigs, and field mice. The photo ops have Facebook written all over them, but you'll also learn a thing or two—like, for example, which marine animal's member used to be tanned and turned into bow ties (answer: the sperm whale).


 

From: CondeNastTraveler.com/ Posted by Mags