Berlin’s botanical gardens, one of the city’s most loved green spaces, reopened its gates to the public on Tuesday with May flowers in bloom as Germans began to get used to leisure activities under a strict regime of face coverings, physical distancing and online booking.
As the gardens welcomed their first visitors since mid March, visitors were promised “the fragrance of nectar in your nostrils, the sound of birdsong in your ear” in a welcome posted on the gardens’ online ticket shop.
Germany’s six-week lockdown had confined many of the city’s residents to their flats or to struggling to keep physical distance rules in overcrowded green spaces.
No more than 1,000 visitors will be allowed in the botanical grounds at one time, and the glasshouses will be closed because physical distancing rules would be difficult to keep.
Commercial galleries across Germany have also started opening their doors. State museums, including tourist magnets such as the Pergamon, the Alte Nationagalerie, and Gemälde Galerie, as well as a range of research institutes and libraries, are due to reopen on 12 May. Visitors are asked, in almost all cases, to book a time slot online. Digital guided tours during the lockdown will remain available for those whose health will not permit them to visit the museums.
Elsewhere zoos, several of which suggested that a lack of income meant they might have to kill their animals, have been allowed to reopen for the past week but with considerable restrictions.
Source The Guardian
