What’s the best remedy for a cold Saturday in Germany? Why a gigantic indoor dinosaur museum of course! Gondwana- Das Praehistorium in Schiffweiler was where we spent our day.

Das Praehistorium calls itself an immersive museum and that has to be the best way to describe it. It has typical museum things such as real dinosaur bones and informative displays.

However, it also has these rooms that have been recreated to simulate the ancient world with great attention to detail. In these little “worlds”, the dinosaurs of that era are on display as full sized animated animals.

The museum warns you about these animations ahead of time as they are rather loud and in most scenes they are eating something (so a bit bloody). The museum actually recommends that children should be 6 and older as they do not offer a refund if children become scared and do not want to continue through the museum. However, O loved it.

There are also multiple little shows and movies that play throughout the museum. Hand held sets for English are provided free of charge at the entrance for the adults. We skipped most of the movies as the staff warned us they can be scary but we did watch the “World’s biggest dinosaur show” at the end. There were large animatronic dinosaurs kind of fighting to protect their young. It was really impressive. Though E started chanting “Eat those eggs” at the Aucasaurus, so that got a little weird.

Once we completed the dinosaur section, there was also an entire wing dedicated to the evolution of man, which was also fascinating to walk through.

Once we made it through the museum without a single tear shed, we celebrated by enjoying the indoor playground that is part of the museum.

Pros: Unique museum experience, lots of hands on activities, designed well with good mixture of regular museum, movies and themed rooms, and an indoor playground! Cons: Some of the dinosaur scenes were graphic and loud (the museum repeatedly warns you about this so you know going in and they are happy to direct you around things they think might scare the children), distance from us ( 1 hr 45 min) and the price. It was 58 EUR for a family card ( 2 adults and 2 kids). However, to be fair, you can spend an entire day in there with all of the shows and the indoor playground.