My husband and I visited our friend Hilde in Turbenthal, Switzerland, Sept. 15-22, 2019.
Turbenthal is a small village with no hotels, but we couldn’t stay in Hilde’s tiny apartment. Instead, not far away, she found us the Zentrum Rämis Mühle (Rämismühle, Mühlestrasse 8, 8487 Ramismuhle, Switzerland; phone +41 52 396 44 44, www.raemismuehle.ch [in German only]).
Elvas, in eastern Portugal, has a long history of preserving plums in syrup. The town’s oldest operating plum-processing factory is Frutas Doces (Rua Martim Mendes, 17A; phone +351 268 628 364, ameixas-elvas.com), founded in 1919, and visitors to its museum can watch workers prepare greengage plums using traditional methods.
Also on display are items from the factory’s 100 years, including tools, advertising and packaging. Open daily, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-6 p.m. Entry is free.
More than 130 pinball machines that visitors can play, some dating back to the 1930s, stand in the Flipper Museum (Radnóti Miklós utca 18, Budapest; www.flippermuzeum.hu/en), housed in the basement of a 19th-century building in central Budapest, Hungary. It is the largest such collection in Europe.
The entry fee of HUF3,500 (near $11.50) grants a visitor unlimited play time on any available machine. Open 4 p.m.-12 a.m. Wed.-Fri., 2-12 Sat. and 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sun.
The Frank A. Perret Museum in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, commemorates the volcanic eruption of May 8, 1902, that buried much of the city and killed more than 30,000 people, leaving only three residents alive.
Closed for five months for expansion, the museum reopened in May 2019 as the Mémorial de la Catastrophe de 1902 (169 rue Victor-Hugo; phone +222 05 96 78 15 19, www.memorial1902.org [in French only]).
It displays more than 400 artifacts recovered from the buried city plus exhibits on life before and after the eruption. Open daily, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. €8 (near $9).
A museum and restaurant, La Cité de la Gastronomie (4 Grand Cloître du Grand Hôtel-Dieu; citegastronomielyon.fr/en), opened in a 15th-century hospital building in Lyon, France, in October 2019.
Two floors of the museum have exhibits focusing on the culinary history of Lyon as well as on international food traditions. On the third floor, the Gastro’Lab is a working space where chefs and researchers experiment with ingredients and cooking techniques. The fourth floor has an open kitchen where visitors can interact with international guest chefs and sample foods.
Scheduled to open in Vienna, Austria, on March 12, 2020, the Albertina Modern will be home to more than 60,000 pieces of post-1945 modern art by more than 5,000 artists. Housed in the newly restored Künstlerhaus, on Karlsplatz, the museum is just off the Ringstraße, a few blocks from the main Albertina Museum.
For info, contact the Albertina Museum (phone +43 1 534 83 0, www.albertina.at).
From Nov. 3, 2019, to March 1, 2020, every state-operated museum in Italy is offering free entry on the first Sunday of the month. A complete list of participating museums, organized alphabetically by region, can be found at www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/Contenuti/MibacUnif/Comunicati/visualizza_asset.html_742289851.html (in Italian only).
