The Milk Museum

Thrifty Travel Mama and I forged a little online friendship after I began following her blog several months ago.  She and her husband are American expats in Germany with their three young boys.  Her blog is excellent; I don't even remember how I stumbled upon it in the first place, but I appreciated her attention to detail, as well as her focus on budget-and-family-friendly travel in Europe.  As I read along, I kept discovering more and more things we had in common, until I finally left a comment on one of her posts articulating as much.  Amazingly, she didn't dismiss me as a creepy fangirl-stalker, and we began exchanging emails.

And then on a whim, Pete and I decided to invite them up to stay with us on a rare weekend we were free of church responsibilities.  We were crazy enough to ask, and they were crazy enough to accept, which we took as another sign we were a good match.

And we had a lovely time!  Definitive proof!

They headed out for the three-hour drive to Lux early Saturday morning and arrived before 9am (they've got driving distances with three boys under age six down to a science).  The forecast was decent by autumn-in-Luxembourg standards, so we took a stroll around town.

The Thrifty Travel Family already visited Luxembourg once before, but just for a few hours in the freezing cold on their way elsewhere.  The casemates had been closed during their visit last time, so we took them inside for this uniquely Luxembourgish experience.

little boys like cannons

But the main event of the weekend was a trip to the Luxlait Vitarium in northern Luxembourg.  Luxlait, as you might guess, is Luxembourg's very own brand of dairy products.  I have no idea if Vitarium is a made-up word, but it's basically an interactive museum featuring the world of milk, connected to and partially running through Luxlait's giant processing facility.

in all its glory

In order to make the rather pricy admission worthwhile, we arranged a tour of the facility (in English) ahead of time.

the tour began with a 3-D video, complete with lab coats and virtual time travel

Grab those 3-D dairy products!

Say "cheese!" Or any other dairy product of your choice!

After the video, our guide instructed us to put away our cameras for the tour.  We then spent about an hour walking through the plant in a sort of sealed-off tunnel with windows (so the lab coats were for theatrical effect rather than actual contamination concerns).  We witnessed all the stages of milk's journey from cow to table in its various forms. 

And at the end we were offered samples of cheese and a dairy drink of our choice.

yum-O!

Then we spent the next couple of hours hanging out in the hands-on museum, which we just happened to have all to ourselves the entire time!

All the exhibits include English options

Most of the activities centered around nutrition, with dairy as the star, emphasizing how milk makes you healthy and strong to perform all the museum's activities. 

Power that skeleton!

Dance Dance Nutrition

See, observe how strong I am!  I have a six-pack (if you count them all!)  Ha!

The Vitarium was a fun way to kill a few hours with some new friends on what turned out to be a dismal day weather-wise.  And it even succeeded in making us all feel quite hungry for Luxlait-brand dairy products!

Hooray for milk and new friends who took a chance on the Ts!