There are 150 hands-on activities that you can do to explore sound, heat, light and motion. I had a blast banging on pipes of different sizes to make semi-musical sounds and using pulley systems to lift my friend off the ground. The Science Center Spectrum was full of kids and adults alike, and everyone had a great time playing and learning together. After that, we went to the Gemäldegalerie, which was my friend's pick. This gallery was less interactive than the Science Center Spectrum, so we made sure not to get too close to the paintings when we were examining the brush strokes. We saw hundreds of European paintings from the 13th to the 18th centuries, and my friend made sure to point out all the pieces by the most well-known artists.
Just outside of the Gemäldegalerie, we were surprised by a gathering of food trucks and an outdoor movie theater. We grabbed some food and plopped down in the outdoor seating to watch shows about food from all over the world. The shows were in a mix of German and English, and the ones we watched explored cuisines from Norway, France and Japan.
Finally, we went to the Museum of Natural History, which is called the Museum für Naturkunde in German. It's smaller than the Museum of Natural History in New York, but it has plenty of animal dioramas, facts about outerspace and a huge wet collection, where you can see hundreds of thousands of animals floating in jars of alcohol. While I was there, I learned that back in 2012, during the Long Night of Museums, the Natural History Museum had the visitors vote on the name of a newly discovered species of wasp.
