A Visit to Several Unusual Museums in the United States

02 September 2010

Welcome to the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin

FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to American Mosaic in VOA Special English.

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I’m Faith Lapidus.

Today, we listen to music from Kenna.

And we answer a question about marriage between people of different races.

But, first we tell about some unusual museums in the United States.

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Unusual Museums

FAITH LAPIDUS: Americans love museums. We have art museums, history museums, car museums, train museums and space museums. Many are famous. Millions of people from around the world visit them each year. And then we have those other museums. The kind that make you ask, “Did they really build a museum for that?” Mario Ritter tells us about some of these unusual museums.

MARIO RITTER: It may be yellow, brown, grey, mild, or hot and spicy. We put it on sandwiches, squirt it on hot dogs and even dip pretzels in it. No American picnic would be complete without mustard.

People in the town of Middleton, Wisconsin love it so much, they built a museum in its honor. The National Mustard Museum has over five thousand kinds of mustard from sixty countries. You can even have a taste and buy containers of mustard in the museum.

If you visit the Banana Museum in Auburn, Washington you could learn everything you ever wanted to know about bananas. There are almost four thousand objects in honor of this favorite fruit.