The Long Night of the Museums in Berlin

Tonight was the 23rd Long Night of the Museums, here in Berlin. I came home in the early hours of the morning with a couple of sixty-million-year-old shark's teeth, bought off a palaeontologist in the Natural History Museum for a euro.

What a great city. Of course, Lange Nacht der Museen has been so successful that cities all over the world now do it. But it started in Berlin.

If you're ever here when it's on, check it out. Well over a hundred museums stay open till 2am, and put on special events (including prehistoric shark's tooth jumble sales). One ticket gets you in to everything, and fleets of buses will take you around any of ten nicely designed routes. It starts with a party, at 6pm in the Lustgarten (er, no, it just means Pleasure Garden...) and ends, as does everything in Berlin, with a bangin' techno party, near the Brandenberg Gate.

Most of Berlin's immense, world class museums of art, culture, history and science take part. But so do the smaller museums, including the Hemp Museum, (Hanfmuseum), the Gay Museum (Schwules Museum) and the Garlic Museum (Knoblauchhaus... no I haven't got the German names mixed up. Knoblauch means garlic in German. Though, yes, the English-speaking world is crying out for a gay nightclub called Knoblauchhaus).

There's a little history here, and this year's program in German here...

And if you can't make it to Berlin, at least check out the great 1996 coding of the Hemp Museum website. Only The Man ever updates code.