On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
It’s day 8. Let’s give a warm welcome to Avalune! I think this place should be called the Museum of the Absurd, and I have to say that I have never seen anything like this. So cool in a very bizarre way. My personal favorite is the diorama of plastic dinosaurs with pig features. ~WaterGirl
The year was 2017. Leto was stationed at RAF Croughton in England. A Croughton Librarian, Military Family and Life Counselor and I went to Stuttgart for a girl’s weekend. There is a base there but we didn’t visit – we were there on pleasure. After sampling all the blahness Swabian food had to offer (sorry Germans), a couple girlfriends and I made our way to the Pig Museum in Stuttgart, where an old slaughterhouse houses a beer garden and a large creaky homage to all things pig.
Over 50,000 pig related objects and images, ranging from realism to horror and everything in between, begin outside with a series of metal pigs and a big pink bus.
The pig objects came in a vast array of styles, emotions, and materials.
I had a difficult time connecting to the plethora of pigs. I don’t dislike pigs, they are cute and smart and make adorable noises and very good breakfast food but I just struggled to get it.
There was a small forest of 6 foot tall stuffed pig trees.
I admit I was rather surprised by the amount of space dedicated to sexualized pigs – to the point the museum had a back room for adults like a 90s movie rental store. There were so many sexy pigs, I think the odds are that at least five of you readers are probably harboring a pig fetish.
The life sized human bodied pigs were a level of dystopia that was simultaneously fascinating and horrifying. A surprising number of rooms held these little tableau of pigs – mostly gambling for some inexplicable reason.
It was an overwhelming amount of pig paraphernalia but even after these many years, certain pieces of the display still stand out. The strange aquarium with all the pigs walking off the cliff and drowning in the bottom of the tank like a bunch of lemmings…
The pig that is essentially a head with long bird like legs…
And my favorite, the huge diorama dedicated to plastic dinosaurs with pig features.
Around every corner, in every cubby and crevice stuffed with pigs, I could not help but think, “A brainy and omnivorous animal, the pigoon,” But neither could I stop looking.
It was an education on just how many things can be made in the image of a pig, how many interpretations of pig objects there could be, and how to make an episode of Hoarders look positively austere.
JPL
The pics are hilarious.
Amir Khalid
This has to be the weirdest OTR so far.
Mary G
I laughed so hard now I have the hiccups. Your writing really captures the horror and fascination.
Rob
@Amir Khalid: I agree!
Sloane Ranger
Ye Gods, I know the Germans love their pig flesh but this is a whole new level of obsession. I assume they must have a very long compound word to describe it!
Thanks for bringing this contribution to the theatre of the weird to our attention.
Baud
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
West of the Rockies
This was a hoot! Or maybe an oink?
I’m looking forward to visiting the Tentacle Museum in Tokyo soon.
Sab
@Baud: I never thought that you could be shocked.
Baud
@Sab:
The sexy pigs awakened something in me I thought I had buried forever.
Sab
There is a reason I keep my piggy banks buried in my sock drawer instead of on a shelf.
Pigdog
I was there a couple years ago! The attached restaurant, unsurprisingly, serves sausage…
JeanneT
Well, that was different….
Sm*t Cl*de
While stopping over in Stuttgart for a couple of days I had to choose between the Swine Museum and the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Now I realise what I missed.
First priority were the Staatsgalerie and the Kunstmuseum.
mrmoshpotato
Schweineri – where bacon is fermented into a salty, salty wine.
Wag
Strang and wonderful. But mostly just strange.
thanks!
Auntie Anne
Wow – just wow.
There go two miscreants
I think this is great! The sexualized pigs have, to my eyes, a kind of “Miss Piggy” vibe that is charming.
Sab
America’s military wives (who travel and see the world) shocking other Americans who mostly stay home. Shocking us with pigs. Who knew that was possible?
WaterGirl
@There go two miscreants: @Baud:
Sounds like the two of you have something in common. I hope this newfound lust isn’t the beginning of a new website on the dark web. Oh, who am I kidding, something like that probably already exists.
And, no, that is not an invitation for someone to go looking for it and post a link. :-)
WaterGirl
There’s nothing like a few sexualized pigs to shake up On the Road.
arrieve
Hilarious and disturbing. Who knew it was so easy to sexualize pigs?
MelissaM
The condom machines in the gambling tableau are a nice touch. But I’m freaked by the sexualized pigs. I can’t decide which is worse – the banana-eater or the one taking off her undies.
<<shudder>>
Avalune
Oh my goodness, Baud. Best reaction.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the reaction, many of the pictures were too blurry to use.
Avalune
@Pigdog: That part was not open for our visit unfortunately.
Avalune
@Amir Khalid: Risk you take looking for newbies to post I guess. ?
p.a.
@MelissaM: That banana-eater was a WTF for me too. This place has great Twilight Zone aura.
Sab
I can’t stop laughing. And I like and respect ( and don’t eat) pigs.
WaterGirl
@Avalune: Well, I, for one, hope that now that you’ve lost your OTR virginity, you will submit to On the Road again!
Miss Bianca
Whoa.
That’s all I got.
Whoa.
frosty
OMG, I would have nightmares for years after that. And no, I am NOT one of the five!!
frosty
@WaterGirl: Shouldn’t this have been posted in On The Road After Dark?
opiejeanne
@There go two miscreants: There was a pinup artist many years ago whose subject was what is now called a plus-size woman who was utterly charming and sometimes found herself in a predicament while wearing not very much. Hilda.
SkyBluePink
Too funny!
Thanks? for sharing-
opiejeanne
@Avalune: Thank you for this hilarious and horrifying group of photos. The randomness of the collection, not to mention the oddness, is reminiscent of a place a friend and I visited while we were driving to Fresno from the SF area.
“Visit the World Famous Fish Museum at Red Top” read the signs on the county road between the I-5 and 99, not far from Chowchilla. We had some time to kill so we turned down the narrow road between the fields of tall corn and drove until we thought we were lost, but finally there it was, a white building with peeling paint and a big sign on the roof reading RED TOP MARKET, with gas pumps out front and a glassed in veranda that ran around the building. The museum consisted of about a hundred taxidermed game fish inside that veranda, most without identifying information and most of them swordfish or sharks. It looked like the things people get rid of when their parents die, except it was fish. The “museum” hadn’t been dusted in years and was so ridiculous that my friend and Iwe were still laughing about the place for the next two days until other friends at the motel vowed to stop there on the way home, but later said they couldn’t find the place.
Avalune
@opiejeanne: That’s perfect!
Finely curated museums are great but I love coming across oddities like these pigs and your fish museum.
Avalune
@frosty: Hahaha!
Leto
@frosty:
That’s exactly what one of the five would say!
Avalune
@West of the Rockies: please take pictures and post a OTR. I’ve already set the precedent. ?
J R in WV
Regarding pig porn, I have close friends who used to raise hogs. You don’t want to know about pig sex, really you don’t!
Otherwise, a great post. It was obvious that taking photos was difficult because of the nature of the displays and the poor lighting, but you have picked out the best of the lot. Thanks for sharing~!!~
Avalune
@J R in WV: Lol yes indeed, my photography skills are pretty lacking and it was not an easy place to photo but I hoped subject matter would make up for it.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Well, you are kind of right about that, except that we are having After Dark to publish the On the Roads that aren’t from newbies while after having First Timers Week(s).
WaterGirl
@Leto: That’s exactly what I was thinking. :-) The “it wasn’t me!” – when no one said it was – is the giveaway.
WaterGirl
@Avalune: Go big or go home! That’s what I love about you.
misterpuff
@Baud: Makin’ Bacon!
Onkel Fritze
Coming from the North of Germany, you have my blessing to dump on Swabian food as much as you want to.
Denali
There is always Carhenge in northwest Nebraska for weird places to visit.
WaterGirl
@Denali: We could always have a Weird Places week. :-)
Dan B
The people of Arkansas would have some affinity with this museum, except for the sex, gambling, bizarre tableau,…. well sorta not much at all, but the University of Arkansas football team is the Razorbacks, named after the hairy wild hogs that inhabit the woods. I still have the walnut Razorback napkin rings and the wood Razorback sculpture my father carved. A quirk of rural Arkansas in 1960 were the number of roadside rock and/or insect museums in peoples homes. A blacklight room behind a black velvet curtain was derigeur.
But your swine museum tops all those.