2023-12-03 13:25:17
Everyone complains about the weather, complains about the winter: cold, dark, muddy, slippery. But the time of year also has an advantage, because as long as it gets dark outside early in the evening, the Natural History Museum – one of the most popular museums in the city – offers its popular flashlight tours: you can tour the museum in small groups after work.
The Museum of Communication on Leipziger Straße also offers such evening tours (also digital!) and calls them “Night with the Robots”. They sell out just as quickly as the tours in the Natural History Museum. And there's a reason for that: there's something particularly great about getting such an exclusive (and child-friendly) tour.
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What can I expect on a flashlight tour of the Natural History Museum?
At 5:59 p.m. sharp, the lights in the Natural History Museum go out, the last visitors of the day have just left, and security marches off quickly. And then it is as quiet as it is dark. Stupid, nobody says anything. Only the hastily switched on flashlights shine. The Allosaurus peering (or screaming?) out of the partition into the foyer has never looked more threatening.
Otherwise you can see the bones of the dinosaur, the glass pane between the hallway and the law hall separates its fossilized body from the deceptively real-looking head. But when everything is dark inside, the bones disappear and the head seems to float up high.
Flashlights on, the very private tour of the Natural History Museum begins: You've never seen the Allosaurus like this before.Nicole Schulze
Two guides, a young man and a young woman, briefly explain the rules before we start: Don't touch anything. Stay together. Don't blind yourself with the lamps. That's why headlamps have to be carried in your hand: if you had them on your head and looked at one of them while they explained everything, you would be permanently blinded.
By the way: It's good to have a flashlight with you. Make sure to use fresh batteries so that it has power and doesn't just seem tired – that's annoying when you want to look at something that's a little further away but there's barely enough light. If you don't have a flashlight, you can borrow a small one from the museum.
The flashlight tour lasts a total of 90 minutes and takes you completely through the museum. You can ask anything and have time to look at pretty much everything in peace and take photos. The group does not contain 20 people, in this case seven of them are children. The tour is suitable for children aged eight and over; younger children are not allowed.
With the fossils: These are the secrets of the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum
The first path of the flashlight tour naturally leads into the Jurassic Hall, where the Allosaurus and the other carnivores stand on the right. In the middle of the hall there is the Brachiosaurus, which is more than 13 meters high, and other carnivores. The long-necked dinosaur's name is Oskar and he died as a teenager; When fully grown, it would probably be around 22 meters tall, and its neck would be twice as long. Inconceivably.
Either way: It is the largest exhibited dinosaur in the world and has been here for 100 years; the assembly took 13 years. And because the hall deals with the dinosaurs of the Jurassic period, there is no T-Rex here. He lived in the Cretaceous period, and there are around 80 million years between the two giants. Oskar had long since died out when Tristan went hunting.
Only the light of the flashlights brings some brightness into the pitch-dark hall where Brachiosaurus Oskar stands.Nicole Schulze
At this first stop on the tour alone, you learn a lot about the Natural History Museum in general – ancient excavation boxes are still on the upper floor and have not yet been unpacked – but also about dinosaurs in particular.
It is a mystery how Oskar was able to drink, as he was anatomically unable to lower his neck to the ground. Why, as a herbivore, it had such pointed teeth and not flat ones like a cow, for example. And whether all the bones shown here are real. Many questions and just as many speculations on the part of the visitors, which are all resolved in the end with an enlightening answer from the two guides.
The two study biology and know every detail, have an understandable answer to every question, are patient and point out details that would otherwise remain hidden. If no questions come, they have one of their own up their sleeve, and everyone present is immediately put into guessing mode.
Why can the owl fly silently?
In the best sense of the word, the tour feels like a trip to the “Sendung mit der Maus”. No matter how old you are: you are amazed, you are curious, you learn. This is also the case in the large hall, where the history of evolution and the animal diversity on our planet are shown.
Every person who enters this room stops in their tracks because their eyes cannot comprehend the splendor that the Natural History Museum has to offer here. There are taxidermied animals behind a meter-high and almost room-wide glass display case. Later in the tour the difference between taxidermy and stuffing will also be explained.
At this point, however, the flashlights are shaking wildly, heads are tilted back, everyone is commenting on what they are discovering: kangaroo, butterfly, penguin, coral, turtle, lizard, sloth, crab, flying squirrel. How many animals are there? Hmm, maybe 120? Nonsense, 800, at least! Or no, definitely 1500. Like in an auction, the participants outbid each other until the tour leader finally solves the little quiz.
Luckily it's different than in the film: it's quieter in the museum at night than during the day. And because there are only a few people there, you can take a long look at the lion, for example.Nicole Schulze
And no, we won't give any spoilers. Because the joy of a tour like this is also the guessing games that you shouldn't ruin with advance knowledge. And while the two guides explain why the owl can turn its head 180 degrees and how it is possible for it to hear in three dimensions, a group of children noise past so that you can't understand your own words.
Children's birthday at night! Aha, you can also celebrate here in the evening. It's cool, so for the children, not for flashlight guests who want to listen reverently in order to discover the secrets of nature.
In order to illustrate the owl's silent flight, the guides brought two feather fans. One is made of owl feathers, the other is made of feathers from another bird of prey. Both fans are waved violently one after the other. And surprisingly, the owl doesn't make a sound, whereas the other feathers make, well, a flapping sound.
The wet collection: Dress warmly
It's not really warm in the museum during the evening tour, which is why you should take a jacket or put on a warm sweater. But the thick winter jacket can stay at the front of the wardrobe as the Allosaurus has a close eye on it.
At one point, however, you wish you had a parka. Namely in the so-called wet collection. This, too, is an incredibly large room, with an equally huge glass cube in the middle. It is even accessible, but only selected scientists are allowed to do so.
The wet collection of the Natural History Museum: fish, reptiles and amphibians preserved in alcohol, as far as the eye can seeNicole Schulze
Because there are thousands of animals stored on the glass shelves, all of them pickled in alcohol. To ensure that as little of it as possible evaporates – together with air this would result in a literally explosive mixture – the air is cooled down to 16 degrees. Inside the glass cube it is even 14 degrees.
There are also such special buildings on the two floors above and in the basement. In total, around a million animals are stored here on more than twelve kilometers of shelves. And new animal species are constantly being discovered here! Not in the jungle on research expeditions, as we completely naively imagined, but in classic scientific work in the laboratory.
In the past, so the story goes, animals that obviously belonged to the same species were put into a jar. The oldest objects are 250 years old. Only today can they be compared with each other using DNA analyses. And every few weeks the researchers in the Natural History Museum realize: Wow, we didn't even know about this animal…
Why is T-Rex Tristan so hunched over?
The tour also leads past Knut, who has found a new place and is no longer behind glass. Finally, you come to Tristan, the Tyrannosaurus, who, despite his hunched posture, still looks terrifying and huge.
There was just a meeting of paleopathologists who discovered that Tristan probably had a tumor in his mouth and starved to death. His somewhat crouched posture is due to the height of the ceiling; It could stand in all its glory in the law hall, but it doesn't belong there.
So here, at the end, as a highlight. The guides always surprise you with new, exciting facts. They then stand together around the glass case in which Tristan's 140 centimeter long head with its sickle-shaped XXL teeth is displayed. The light from the flashlights casts shadows on the walls that are both eerie and fascinating.
During the flashlight tour, T-Rex Tristan casts incredibly cool shadows.Nicole Schulze
After about an hour and a half the tour is over. Unfortunately. Because once you're in question mode, you can hardly stop and you realize how many answers, secrets and surprises (glowing scorpions!) the Natural History Museum has to offer. But outside, at the side entrance, the next group is already standing ready with their flashlights.
The flashlight tours can usually only be booked online and cost 15 euros, reduced price 12 euros. Since the museum is affected by a cyber attack, the website, email addresses, telephone system and large parts of the technology are not working as usual. That's why you can currently only pay in cash.
The dates for the flashlight tours are on weekends, for example Saturdays at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. You have to find out when there are free appointments on site. The tours will be offered until spring.
Museum of Natural History, Invalidenstrasse 43, 10115 Berlin; Natural History Museum subway station and tram stop (U6, tram 12, M5, M8, M10).
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