PHÆNOmenal – My First #instawalk Experience

Last sunday I made my way to Wolfsburg for the first time in aaages. For a good reason: I got invited to participate in the first #instawalk of the interactive science center Phæno and recruited my sister to be my companion on this journey full of unraveling wonders and seeing the world with different eyes again.

Phæno is a result of urban planning of the city of Wolfsburg. First, people wanted to build an art museum, but luckily decided for a science museum instead (phew!). The building received its individual and futuristic design from an architectural design competition, which was won by Zaha Hadid in 2000. Since 2005, people can now experiment, discover phenomena, and quench their thirst for knowledge at Phæno. The most important and most fun part of the museum: you can touch and interact with everything!

The **Phæno** science center received its individual and futuristic design by competition winner Zaha Hadid. The building is resting on ten coneshaped concrete feet, allowing for a view to the Autostadt from underneath the building.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN AN #INSTAWALK

Instawalks are becoming more and more popular right now. Many museums and cities are beginning to offer them, and the good thing is: they’re not only for famous instagrammers! Most often you only have to fulfill the criterion to have an instagram account. Then you just send an e-mail or call the organizer of the event and hope to be one of the lucky ones. And btw, this blogpost was not required, I chose to write it! 🙂

ARRIVAL

The Phæno is located directly next to the train station and thus was easy to access for us. What you don’t find that easily though is the entrance. However, where would be fun if I would tell you where the entrance is? I will keep that a secret to me! Walking inside, there were already people waiting for the #instawalk to start. When we were nearly complete, we walked upstairs and sat down at a big table. Every participant received a goodiebag, containing a book (“Besserwisser”, my sister directly said that this fits me perfectly ;-D ), coupons for lunch, info brochures, and – of course – a pen! In addition, we all got the WiFi password and the hashtag we should include in our pictures: #phaeno_walk. Kind of strange to see so many people taking pictures and making stories about random things. But well, at least I was not the only one talking to their smartphone!

Curiosity!

My sister and I at Phaeno in 2006

THE WALK

To give us a short overview of the exhibits and a pinch of instagram, we began with a small guided tour around the exhibition, where our guide talked with us about different dimensions and how a picture can be uploaded to instagram through the internet (or to be more exact: how image information can be “coded” and sent). Following the tour, we had a lot of time to investigate the exhibition on our own. Our favorites where definitely the robot, the witch house, the crooked room, the time-lapse of decaying or growing organisms and all of the optics and life exhibition.

At noon we met with all instagrammers and the organizers for lunch. A meal and a dessert, as well as a drink were included. And the food was great! Then we had time to socialize and to discuss about how we came up with an instagram account.

After lunch, we took that lovely group picture which you have already seen in the title and continued with an architecture tour. I, speaking for myself, am not that interested in architecture, however the tour was still very enjoyable! I could have never imagined that someone could talk that much about one building – in a positive way! Of course there was also time to take pictures of the building from interesting perspectives. Afterwards we had some more time to explore the science center on our own and we then left at closing time.

DSC07934-01-01 — Not only children are astonished by the different phaenomena that can be investigated at Phæno. Also my sister and I were!

In conclusion, we had a phænomenal day letting out our inner child and seeing the world with different eyes. We talked to soo many nice people and had a lot of good laughs. It were science museums like this one which fed my motivation to direct my life towards science. If you’re curious about the #instawalk, you can check out my instagram for pictures. I also put a story highlight called “Phæno” with all stories of that day. We’ll definetely come back, lovely Phæno! Thank you so much for the great organization!

See you soon!
\Stina

P.S: Here are some more impressions of the walk! BTW: Thanks for reading until the end. The random kids that appeared in the pictures are my sister and I at Phæno in 2006!

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