Cheep, cheep! But not so cheep for the over 3's

MACHmit: there be giant chairs for people with cameras to have fun, and craft stuff galore going on.

This morning Orla and I went to MACHmit, the children's museum on Senefelder Strasse in Prenzlauerberg, which is sort of north-ish as regards Berlin. I hadn't heard of it before, but another blogger had alerted me to the fact that there are baby chicks hatching there up until the 22nd of April on a daily basis. And that's all the information folk like me and Orla need to know we want to go.

Even the baby chicks knew I got a new lens for my birthday that I was a bit clueless with. They tried their best to be in focus, but alas, all was lost.

 I mean what price do you put on seeing baby chicks hatching into this world? Well, I discovered it's probably not Euros 4.50 each. Maybe for me and my jaded adult eyes, but I can't help but think it's rubbish when they make you pay an adult price for anyone over the age of 3. Not of course that the chicks are the only thing going on there. In fact there's quite a bit, including a pretty ace climbing area of ups, downs, tunnels, and bridges. Our independent critic, ahem, branded it "Better than Bambooland". Really? Cause it's 3 floors of climbing, slides, trampolines, balls, blah, blah, blah, and something I've just found out is called a 'Wabbelberg'. But there you go, awesomeness cannot be measured in ball volcanoes alone.

The climbing thing with bridges so high off the ground floor it'd make a normal person crap themselves. Toilets, incidentally are in the cellar. 

Admittedly the place does look amazing. It's inside an old church which to say it's been converted is an understatement. The main part of the museum is on the ground floor and you then go up wooden steps and through a little gate to get to the play bit. Here you have access to both sides of the climbing area, which are joined together by a number of bridges - you can see just one of, I think, 4 in the photo above. Kids over 5 are allowed to go in climbing on their own, whereas poor misfortunates with under-5's must accompany them. I took full advantage of Orla's recent 5th birthday to not go in as I thought I might actually freeze with fear on one of those bridges, and have to get a school group of 8 year olds to shove me across.

Outside of the play area there are tables set up with activities for the kids to do, though most of these seemed set up for groups which had booked. They were making cheeping chickens out of plastic cups  and that sort of thing. There's also a cafe up there which looked quite nice, though all the chairs had crap screwed on to them like scrubbing brushes which was either meant to look 'arty & creative' or was for the sensory deprived. Who knows, but it was enlightening at least for me as I realised I quite like my chairs 'plain' so I've saved loads of time not starting a chair-enhancement project in the dining room.

Anyway, ignore me. I set out with the wrong mindset for this place, purely because it took us SO long to just get there. I don't venture into Prenzlauerberg all that often, and days like today where we started off on the U-bahn then had to change to a replacement bus service at Potsdamer Platz, then went about 800 metres to the next U-bahn stop, got back on, only to have to change back onto a bus again to get as far as Eberswalder Strasse, and the have a little walk to get to MACHmit, and then we couldn't stay much longer than an hour as we had to get back to collect Hamish from Kita.

So overall, we'd say 'Yay!' to the climbing place, & the baby chicks, and 'Urgh!' to the pricing and well... that's about all. So that's good, isn't it? Sounds like a hearty recommendation to me!

Links:
MACHmit: Senefelder Strasse 5, Prenzlauerberg, Berlin 10437
Bambooland: Goerzallee 218, Lichterfelde, Berlin, 14167