One wouldn’t expect to visit a 125 year old abbey/monastery and find a museum full of random things. Besides the largest pig hairball and assortment of half deformed cows (including one with 8 legs!) in the taxidermy room, the St. Benedict Abbey Museum in Mount Angel, Oregon also has a Russian exhibit in the far east end of the basement. There are old icons and treasures of the area’s past because a few miles away are three Russian Orthodox churches, whose locations are mentioned on the museum’s walls. And let’s not forget other random things like rocks and minerals and Civil War memorabilia.
The place is unique in other ways: it has its own zip code, they make their own soap and candles (but maybe all monks do?), there’s an extremely rare book collection and the library was designed by famous architect Alvar Aalto.
