Museum für Naturkunde

"Ooh heaven is a place on earth!" Yes, and it's easily found for 5 euros at Berlin's Natural History Museum...I love the Biodiversity wall of deep grey with individually lit, brilliantly-colored animals. The mineral and gem collections are fabulous too.

This visit, possibly due to wide spread renovations, the museum featured a temporary four-booth video installation of interviews with people around the globe asking them to discuss the same four topics: climate change, education, nature, and the meaning of life. Listening and reading the translations as they spoke was fascinating because there was so much common ground despite geological distance. Ah, humanity. I'll distill the main themes for you: Poverty is a BEAST. Education is the path to a better life. Teachers deserve to be paid more. Domestic violence is no good. People need and deserve clothing and food. Mother nature is a treasure to respected. Drought is especially problematic. Family and children are core to happiness, but it also helps to pursue creative endeavors in one's life. And there you have it.

They have a special area teaching about taxidermy and specimen preparation which is highly informative. Seems they offer school groups the chance to explore science, hence the children's art pic.

I always enjoy a visit to what I call the 'cold room' but is actually the "Wet Collection" of one million zoological creatures in ethanol. Wow.

Finally, just some fun view of various exhibits. The taxidermy birds won many accolades at a recent international taxidermy show and you can likely see why. Because they are awesome! And that glorious hippo, because some days I feel hungry like that.