Museum für Naturkunde – deutsch, bitte!

As I shared last month, the day after my birthday was spent at the Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum), looking at and learning about dinosaurs. Obviously, if you were to ask me, dinosaurs are the best reason to visit this place, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other amazing things too.

For instance, Knut the polar bear. I actually saw this guy back when he was alive, but he wasn’t so interesting then.

Knut aside, there are a few other things I really like about this place.

One is the cost: $6 for adults and $3.50 for students. It’s incredibly affordable, which is wonderful if they can operate charging those fees.

Two is the size: the museum took us about three hours to explore, but we spent most of the time on the dinosaurs, a bit on earth science-y things, and a bit more in the taxidermy area, reading and learning about different animals and variations in species. However, the rest we pretty much zoomed through. So there was definitely enough to keep us occupied, had we spent an entire day there, but we only did three hours and still felt like we saw a lot and got our money’s worth.

Three is the accessibility: A natural history museum definitely has the capacity to be super boring, but this one wasn’t. The layout is open and visually appealing, there are a lot of things to look at without necessarily reading, and the information placards and sections (particularly with the dinosaurs) are up to date, with touch-screen interaction, etc. I know this is stuff for often for kids (or at least under the guise of being for children), but it also keeps us adults from getting bored, which I appreciate.

All in all, I recommend visiting this place if you haven’t been already, because it truly is an interesting and ever-evolving resource for information about the world around us.