Switzerland is evidently a land of collectors; per capita, it has nearly twice as many museums as the U.S. And with that many museums, some of them have to be really a bit…well…odd.
The scene above, for instance, is at the Musée des Grenouilles at Estavayer-le-Lac. If you know that means Museum of Frogs, you won’t be surprised to learn that there are many more such 19th-century domestic scenes there, all populated with stuffed frogs. It was started in 1927 by an ex-soldier who took a turn for taxidermy.
Some of the others have a more obvious historic basis. Swiss inventors developed the hemstitch sewing machine, and the country has two sewing machine museums, each with hundreds of examples. One’s in Fribourg, the other in Dürrnten.
A survey by TheLocal.ch lists quite a few more: 5000 years of shoes, Swiss wrestling, wax copies of diseased body parts, typewriters and more.
