Bremerhaven, Germany -- Klimahaus Museum

Our German guest who recommended this place described it as a climate museum where we could walk through and experience the different climate zones. The literature for this place describes it as something between a science center and a theme park, and that, we discovered, was a pretty apt. The shape of the building itself was impossible to miss:

The Klimahaus (from their website)

We started with an exhibit about climate change. 

This was a panel at the entry. Similar to the approach to the Nazi past, the attitude seems to be one of unflinchingly facing the truth. We found it refreshing.

This was a very tactile way to get a point across: the cans were weighted to represent the carbon contributions from various everyday activities, from eating a vegan meal to recycling your glass bottles to taking an airplane flight. 

Then it was on to the main exhibits. We walked through a refrigerated corridor that mimicked an alpine glacier, and then a hot dry Sahara desert environment. Seemed random until we read that these were examples of the wide variety you'd experience if you traveled along the line of 8 degrees longitude (where the city of Bremerhaven is located) around the world north to south. The museum's website gives a good description of all of them, with far better photographs than mine, and it's well worth the read. At each station, they also introduced you to the people who lived there and how they traditionally lived with the local climate, and how changing climate affected their lives and future prospects.

At the entrance to the "alpine glacier" in Switzerland.

Inside the "glacier." They really cranked up the air conditioning to make this effect.

Just a few steps further and we were in the "desert."

You could walk this swinging rope bridge in the tropical landscape.

And whoosh! Next thing we knew we were in an Antarctic research station. (No penguins though.)

Coming back north up the other side of the world after Antarctica we visited Samoa.

Somewhere in the South Pacific. I understand that the museum flew some islanders to Germany to build this traditional shelter accurately.

Alaska tundra. If you look closely you'll see the ghost of the bird blending into the landscape.

I'm not sure? A wagon propelled by sail.

By the end we were dazzled, and totally understood why our guest would have recommended it to us.  Well worth the entry fee. We went up to the roof where there was a small cafe, and where I took the photo in the previous post showing our ship docked with some of the other tall ships.