Germany is home to over 6,200 museums — an impressive number for a country half the size of Texas. In Tübingen alone, you can spot car museums, art museums, history museums and more.
Europe in general houses some of the most famous art pieces on earth and enough car museums to fulfill even the most zealous car lover’s dreams.
It was no surprise, then, when I stumbled across a pamphlet listing activities and sights in my area that was filled with museums. What came as more of a surprise, however, was the casually mentioned “Stuttgart Pig Museum” on the very last page.
My curiosity got the best of me and I immediately googled the pig museum, only to find a blog post titled “The Horrors of the Stuttgart Pig Museum.” Naturally, my interest was immediately sparked and I took the next train to Stuttgart.
Beings as I’m not the best at navigating myself through the old, winding streets of most German towns, I was nervous about finding the museum once I got to my final bus stop, but was pleased to see a promising arrow-shaped sign proclaiming “Schweine Museum: Art, Culture, and Kitsch.”
I followed the sign’s directions and turned the corner, only for my eyes to immediately gaze upon what I would rather call the glories of the Stuttgart Pig Museum. At the end of the block stood a giant pig sculpture, staring into the distance with dead eyes and wearing an equally giant hat, for some reason.
I quickly snapped a picture and sent it to my mom, along with a message stating “This must be the place,” with a naive enthusiasm about what was to come.
Immediately upon entering, I got a glimpse of what the walls of the museum were hiding when I went into the gift shop to purchase my ticket and glanced over at pig-shaped salt and pepper shakers in what I can only describe here as a compromising position. Still not discouraged, I grabbed my ticket and headed up the stairs to the first of three floors filled top to bottom with, you guessed it, pigs.
The museum is made up of themed rooms, and the first few I entered were fun, cute and even educational, but nothing too exceptional or noteworthy: a few (hundred) piggy banks here and there; not one, but two rooms filled entirely with pig mugs; and even a giant advent-calendar-like room with a box and pig for every day of the year.
More notable, however, was the entire wall of salt and pepper shakers, similar to those aforementioned but labeled from cities all throughout the world.
Next, I ventured into a room that almost made me need to break out my inhaler as I gasped at hundreds of pig figurines that wouldn’t be allowed on daytime television. I finally started to understand the title of the blog post that I had read, but I stayed strong and continued through the museum, thinking that surely it couldn’t get any worse.
Depending on who you ask, however, it could. I saw pig heads on chicken feet, a life-sized mannequin with a pig face and ripped out eyes and a dinosaur toy with a pig snout. The memorabilia ranged from cute to shocking to utterly horrifying, but the promise of an experience you can’t get anywhere else was certainly fulfilled.
So, if you ever find yourself in the city of Stuttgart, my recommendation is to pass on the Mercedes-Benz and Porsche Museums; you already see thousands of cars every single day. Sure, you could go to the German Agriculture Museum or one of many art museums, or you could experience the glories, horrors and oddities of the Stuttgart Schweine Museum.
— Shannon Rabotski is a 2016 graduate of Monroe High School and is a junior at Drake University. She is spending the year studying abroad in Tubingen, Germany. She can be reached at shannon.rabotski@drake.edu.
