Tag Archives: Long-Night-of-the-museums

Skipping the Museum Night

Posted on by
Reply

I used to be a frequent traveller through the nightly Berlin whenever the Long Night of Museums was happening in this town. In summer and in winter. Now, as the winter edition of this event is happening I’m gonna skip it again. The reason is simple: They reduced the event in winter in the way that instead of around 100 museums taking part only 50 museums will be open in the late evening. This is ok, but what is not acceptable is that not only that the organisers raised the entrance fee from 12 euros to about 15 euros if you decide to get a ticket on the same day of the event but that they charge the same price for this “mini”-night of the museum as for the big one in summer. If I buy a noodle bag at the grocery store and I don’t get 1 kilo but only  a1 pound bag they won’t charge the same price. So, by skipping this event I’d rather concentrate on a few exhibitions going on visiting them  whenever I want.

getting the money back

Posted on by
Reply

Among the visitors of the “Long Night of the Museums” you’ll basically find two visitor groups – the “economists” and the “moodists”.

Economists: They are the ones who run around with a calculator in their head, they start with the idea that they spent 12 euros for a ticket and subtract after each museum how much money they would have spent there if they actually would have come on a normal day – so, the single ticket price. After they reached the 12 euros or are above it they are satisfied since they know it was now “worth” it taking part in the Museum Night.
These are the people who are basically interested in numbers – “gee, we visited 13 museums in 8 hours and only because we couldn’t find a parking place soon enough before 2 am prevented us from entering the 14th museum”. Asking them if they enjoyed the art that they saw and wondering what they saw deliveres poor results but they surely can tell you exactly how long they sometimes had to wait until they could get into a museum and how long they were in there.

Moodists: These people are taking part because for one reason – They love the special mood and atmosphere that museums create at night, they literally see the presented art in a different light then and they enjoy the extra events that are taking place too.

I think this second group is the one that I belong to. Admittingly I am a little bit a “economist” too – in that way that I often visit museums during that night that I normally would not go to or pay money for but since they are somehow for free I have a look at them. One of these decisions led me to the “music instruments”-museum, one that surprised me a lot in a positive way since it was much more interesting than I thought it would be.