Photos by Taras Bekhta
It was a long time since we last wrote in the blog. A cold winter finally came to Berlin a few weeks ago, so the only rational solution to shelter oneself from a severe weather was to visit numerous museums, exhibitions and galleries.
That is what we did not a long time ago. Mind also, that tomorrow, on 31 January the vast majority of museums and other cultural places will open their doors for free as a support to families of refugees who found the asylum in Berlin. More information about the list of institutions that will let visitors in for free can be found here.
So, in order to keep up with the topic, we’d like to share our impressions about visiting German Museum of Technology.
Originally the museum was focusing on a railway history but now it features a vast majority of exhibitions, and honestly we were unable to cover that all.
The main building hosts various exhibitions, among which one is dedicated to first computers developed by Konrad Zuse, opened in 2002, telecommunications, fabric production, writing and printing, textile works. The primary building also hosts a ticket office and a cafeteria with a local German menu.
An entrance fee costs only 8 EUR and you can also take an audio guide for an additional price of 2 EUR. What we found a bit uncomfortable is that some stands and items had only German explanations, for English you’d need an audio guide. However, it is still fun discovering antique things from the past, like 1920’s luxurious phonograph from U.S. and a first German TV set.
A whole railway depot is dedicated to a history of a railway and we must say it is impressive. Even if you are not a fan of railway and did not want to become a locomotive machinist as I did, you’d definitely be amazed to observe these huge machines, the oldest we spotted was back from 1835. In some cases you can even descend under a train or to the operators cabin and mess with the leverages.
Another exhibition that was of a great interest for us was a history of images and cameras production — from daguerreotype technique to modern cameras and photography development in each genre.
Fair to say that building also hosts jewelry production exhibition, sometimes museum employees would even perform a workshop, chemical and biology industry exhibitions and movie production upstairs.
A new building features an amazing vessels display and aircraft show-off. It is really impressive to see a whole vessel or a plane placed in a pavilion. A lot of information do digest if you would read all explanations on each item indeed.
An aircraft demonstration is even more impressive. From Da Vinci’s style first plane prototypes, it would take one on a long journey through the aircraft development. Old wreckages of WWII planes all with a traces of bullets and their own history are demonstrating that period of German history.
As was said before the museum is very vast, so we were unable to see that all. It also hosts a brewery, an exhibition of automotive industry and science centre “Spectrum”. Definitely recommend spending there half a day, enriching your knowledge on technical development of human civilization.