I write this a year on from my trip, having been rightly shamed into writing some more on it! Thanks for the nudge
@snowleopard ! My intention was to write the reviews as I went along in the evenings, but for various reasons this slipped by pretty quickly (the main one being that I hate typing on phone keyboards). Anyway...
Day 3
I spent most of the day hanging around in Ostrava, an amazingly quiet city considering its size. The bus times had conspired against me, and I just couldn’t get a bus in decent time to do something natural history-orientated in Wroclaw. I wandered around a few markets at my leisure, eventually heading to a mall after doing some birdwatching in a park. I have a bit of a thing for going to foreign malls - no matter which country I have visited them in, they all somehow manage to end up looking virtually identical. I Have no interest in shopping, but looking at the tiny, unique differences between them in different countries always really interests me.
I eventually wandered back to my hotel, before walking to the bus stop to pick up another Flixbus to Wroclaw to my only AirBnB on the trip. Due to my reliance on taxis, Uber and buses for my travel, I resigned myself to staying in cheap hotels most of the time, which at least gave me the flexibility to grab a good breakfast so I didn’t have to think about lunch, as well as somewhere to store my luggage securely and not have to worry about arranging to meet someone. In Wroclaw however, I was going to be staying for three nights which more than justified using an AirBnB.
Days 4 & 5
I set off bright and early to the zoo. My flat was right in the centre of the city, but was only a 20 minute walk and tram ride so getting there for opening wasn’t a hardship. Big targets for this zoo were the reptile house, aquarium, and Afrikarium, as well as the rarities around and about. On both days I went straight to the monkey house to attempt to see the red giant squirrel as well as the black giant squirrel on the way just outside the rhinos. Despite repeated visits on both days, I drew a complete blank, but that’s hardly a huge surprise. Wroclaw isn’t a colossal zoo in terms of footprint, but this initial walk over and around from the entrance did at least show me that there were interesting species throughout the zoo - the crazy species list certainly wasn’t confined to the herps or fish.
After a short wander I went off to the Afrikarium, which is, in short, incredible. Easily in my top three zoo buildings with Gondwanaland in Leipzig and World of Birds in the Bronx. What makes it so brilliant is the range of critters housed within. As an obscure freshwater fish geek, this was hevan for me with plenty of big tanks full of fish to gaze at. Charismatic megafauna are naturally prescent as crowd pleasers, but it is a shame that the hippos pulled the short straw with no outdoor access. The enclosure is however a good size, with plenty of deep water, but more land area for their nocturnal roaming would really have helped. The fur seals however are treated to a superb pool which may be one of the best pinniped enclosures I’ve seen, whilst the manatees also come off extremely well. The birds in the free flight areas also come off well, being able to wander around the open-topped enclosures for other species at their leisure. I spent many hours here over my two days, and still didn’t manage to spot everything.
Other highlights of this superb zoo were the Aquarium with a great selection of freshwater species from around the world (though reflections and badly angled glass were major frustrations), the Odrarium with the wonderful combo of native fish and ducks, and of course the reptile house. Compared to the other great herp collections I’ve visited in Europe (Berlin, Moscow & Cologne), it excited me far more than Berlin’s did, which felt a bit sterile, was a big step up in enclosure size and enrichment from Moscow, but failed to reach Cologne’s sheer quality at every level. But Wroclaw had an elephant trunk snake, which was amazing. It also had some great mini-exhibits dotted around, including a superb one which detailed the zoo’s work with the Capricorn beetle (
Cerambyx cerdo) and even showed off a larva in a rearing petri dish.
Some of Wroclaw had a bit of an odds and sods feel to it, some of the enclosures stuck out a bit as being someone disconnected to the rest of the zoo - the huge brown bear woodland didn’t quite fit to my eyes, almost like someone had grabbed a bit of Ostrava and moved it into Poland.
@sooty mangabey's suggestion of the restaurant was superb, thanks so much!
I loved Wroclaw. I think it has a great future in the zoo world, and really think it is up there with the best in Europe’s mega zoos. Top 3 for me? No. Top 5? Possibly…
Day 6
This was going to be a blitz day, travelling to Poznan, then straight to Poznan’s new zoo. Relying on cheap, mid-day Uber trips helped me here, getting me to my hotel, then straight to the zoo (which is a bit of a drive out) without me speaking the language.
I was unprepared for the sheer scale of Poznan Nowe. After two days of plodding around Wroclaw, Poznan’s hills and distance were a bit of an endurance test. However, the zoo was well worth the trecking, even if I didn't have enough time to do a full double looped visit. Though rather more mammal focused than I normally like, Poznan has such a variety of mammals housed in generally excellent, spacious enclosures it's very hard not to be impressed. Like Ostrava, Poznan is largely a managed woodland which happens to have animal enclosures in. I imagine in May or Autumn this is one of the prettiest zoos around, particularly in the center around the lake. Other groups certainly aren't forgotten however, birds of prey are well represented, and a clever outdoor building with invertebrate enclosures exposed to the low sun late in the afternoon was very nice indeed: not often you see sun beetles fighting over themselves to get to the sun's warming rays.
Visiting collections in northern Europe in early spring usually doesn't show zoos at their best: sensitive species may be behind the scenes, others may still be hibernating, the weather can be highly variable, off-season work may still be continuing, and animals sometimes just don't want to go outside. As such, despite the cold, but sunny weather on my visit, Poznan didn't show itself at it's best - there were a large number of no shows and some sections were closed for maintenance. However, most of the species I was really keen to see (Siberian weasel, wood bison, takin) were happy out and about in the cold, so I can't complain about missing the peasants. Plus the zoo was dead, which is always a bonus.
One additional section which needs mentioning was the excellent nocturnal house. This was probably one of the nicest nocturnal houses I've been to, not only with a great selection of species, including vampire bats, but also with excellent enclosures which avoided one of the issues such houses often have. After seeing owls in Moscow's nocturnal house, and thinking that although cool, space limitations and having them so close to a noisy public wasn't really going to work, seeing the scops owl (Indian? I can't remember) in Poznan with a large enclosure, as big as many outdoor aviaries it would get elsewhere, and a calm, spacious public area really sold the idea to me.
Overall, Poznan worked really well as a specialised collection. It isn't trying to be a species tickfest like Wroclaw, but it's trying to present a diverse selection of mammals, balanced by some additional taxa, in substantial enclosures. It's certainly not perfect, the harbor seal doesn't come off well, and some of the paddocks are a bit bland and lack enrichment, but overall this is a lovely zoo. I preferred Ostrava, but not by as much as I was expecting...
Ps. apologies for any spelling errors in this, trying a new method of writing long posts on the phone which hasn't worked perfectly, but at least it's writing.
). Likewise echidnas, but every wednesday at 1:00 pm is bath and weighing of echidnas.
