Berlin Naturkund Museum

We are in Berlin on a little educational holiday. We are all getting educated on this trip as I get to see my current teacher Dr Jordan Peterson in Helsinki while the boys get to do every museum we have time for, that they are interested in. We are flying to Finland on Saturday but we loved Berlin last time we came, two years ago so we are taking three days in this city too. As Caden wants to be a paleontologist and as the Naturkund museum has the tallest dinosaur skeleton in the world, we had to come back. We spent all morning there today. What is particularly lovely is that both the boys took so much more out of this visit. In particular Miles. Miles stood with me as we watched a good film about plate tectonics with great demonstrations of how mountains are made and how tsunamis happen. We saw hot smokers and talked about halophiles and barophiles, thermophiles and the worms that live on the hot smokers, it's such a fascinating eco system... I love participating in their education on all these subjects. It's gratifying to see their understanding deepen.


This was when we got the bus at 6am from our local small town to the city to get the train. Public transport all the way... Miles fell asleep shortly after this was taken.

We arrive at the Naturkund Museum (Natural History)

 Caden took great pleasure in telling me the names of everything we looked at and correcting me wherever I made a mistake (often).

We went back to the minerals room, we had loved it here last time. It's a very good collection. 

There is a good evolution room, with all kinds of species of animal in the glass cabinets to observe. 

(Since I am going to see Dr Peterson this weekend, I had to make sure a photo of the Lobster made it into my blog, it's only right!)

 I love how since this is Caden's 'thing', he spends time telling Miles stuff about what they are looking at. That's a lovely thing to step back and watch.

 We found this room and just, wow! Each microscope was ready set up with a slide underneath and properly focused. There were lice (yeah, eugh! but also woah!) There was a little worm.. it was alive and swimming around and around... Caden thought it was cute :-| (it was not cute!) There were plant cells - so amazing! All green and uniform! I would have liked to have a more powerful microscope to see them! There were also cheese mites... The boys said it was gross and Caden said he would never eat cheese again... that opened up a conversation about how we are in fact, made of bacteria and why we eat probiotic food (they love home made kombucha). 

A bit like a scene from the science lab in Alien! 

A brief lesson on taxidermy. 

Then we got the U bahn and the overground train to Alexanderplatz for the Fernsehertur.. Television tower. Just a really high, iconic building with a great view of Berlin. The kids thought it was OK. I wouldn't recommend blowing 25 quid unless your kids really want to see Berlin from above. It wasn't personal enough to us and we looked and left. The lift was pretty cool.. it had a glass roof so you could see the entire lift shaft going up really high. 

We fed a pigeon her lunch!