Our recent trip to Berlin included the Lange Nacht der Museen. Long museum nights are popular in many cities around Europe (we’ve also been to them in Zurich and Munich). Berlin has two a year, with 100 museums around the city opening their doors from 6pm to 2am. Special events for the evening include concerts, demonstrations, and things like the opportunity to destroy your evil things with a special machine (after first attending the Dinge-Sprechstunde, during which an expert will evaluate your thing for evilness).*
The festivities were centered on Museum Island. The big light show entertained us while we were milling around waiting for buses to take us to the more far-flung locations. There were so many interesting-sounding things to do that we had a lot of trouble choosing.
The DDR Museum was serving up ‘typical East-German cocktails’. I was worried that drinking one might make my hair curl up into a mullet.
Several museums had the added bonus of letting visitors participate in The Big Draw Berlin. We doodled at the Museum of Communication and at the Sammlung Scharf Gerstenberg (which has an amazing ‘Surreal Worlds’ collection, by the way).
The big Bauhaus exhibit at the Martin-Gropius-Bau was also part of Museum Night, but we wanted to spend more time there, so we went the next day instead. It’s a fabulous exhibit, probably the most comprehensive presentation of the Bauhaus that I’ve ever seen in one place.
The dance show at the Schwules Museum was quite colorful.
We also hit a fabulous photography show at the Akademie der Künste (right next door to the Adlon hotel, featuring the Blanket Jackson Balcony). I’m sure we visited a couple other museums that night, too, but that’s all I can remember at the moment.
—
* I didn’t even make this part up. It happened at the Museum of Things.