Lange Nacht der Museen

...or Long Night of the Museums...

For what I understand, a couple of times a year, there is a 'long night' at the museums in Berlin, where not only are they open until 2 a.m. and an entry to all of them only costs 8 Euro for students, but there is also special exhibits, performances, and shows. This was obviously too good of an opportunity to pass up. So, at around 7 p.m. on Saturday night, we headed out in the rain and wind to soak up some culture.

We started at the "Kultur Forum," where there are various galleries, centrally located next to Potsdamer Platz. There, we saw an exhibit by Heinz Hajek-Halte, a German photographer who was one of the pioneers of Montage and combining images on film. It was really interesting to see his photos, not only because they were really well done, but also because his work has had such an influence on photography that you see all the time. We also meandered around the Gemalde Galerie for a while, but the older artwork isn't my favorite, so we moved on.

From there, we headed to the Automobil Forum on Unter den Linden, where in the midst of Volkswagens, they had a Pot Art exhibit. They had some interesting pieces by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Keith Haring (to name some big names), as well as pieces by less famous artists.

After a brief stop, we continued on to the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German History Museum). The museum is divided into two parts: the permanent collection (in the old Zeughaus) and the temporary exhibits (in the new I.M. Pei building). Since the permanent collection is much too large to see even in a whole day, we just went to the temporary exhibits, where we look at changing landscapes of Berlin and the Portuguese exploration of the world.

From there we headed back to the Zoologischer Garten, where the Aquarium was also open. It was especially nice not to have to feel as if we had to see our moneys worth here, since it was very crowded and kind of like any other aquarium. We did learn some German vocab though based on the animals that we saw!

Our final stop of the night was the planetarium in Prenzlauerberg. There were supposed to be two star and laser shows at the planetarium (one at midnight and one at 1 a.m.), and getting there right before 1, we realized that it was already full. Luckily the people who work there are pretty awesome, and decided to do a third show for us. Although we had to wait for about an hour, this was definitely the perfect way to end the night. It began with a basic overview of some winter-night constellations; since it was in German, it was a little hard to understand but overall good. Then came the laser show. They had some pretty advanced laser-techniques in my mind, and since they had nothing else after our show, we got an extra-long show. The lights, the music, and the fog machine is something I would definitely recommend seeing when in Berlin. The planetarium seems like a cool place...

The coolest thing about the whole idea is that there is no way, even in one night that you could even think of going to all the museums that Berlin has to offer. Now I have seen quite a few, but there are still so many more that I need to go to!