So nice, that you are back in Europe
@CGSwans 
Is travelogue coming ?
Great question.
And one I don’t have a satisfying answer to other than ‘sort of’, which is why I’m answering it here.
So, as close followers of the global and European challenge threads such as Twilighter will already be aware, I am back in my favourite continent (at least for zoos - the “football” here is much less exciting, and I’m yet to brave the terror of a northern winter).
What I haven’t yet mentioned is that I’m here until late September. Not quite the 200 day epic of 2017 documented in this thread, but still a very welcome and overdue prolonged break.
You might recall that I was in the US, starting out on a planned 12-month North America sojourn that began in… March 2020. Two weeks later, I was back home, along with pretty much everybody else in the world. Thankfully, I was able to cancel my leave of absence from work and, all things considered, I had a pretty good pandemic. The money I didn’t spend in America came in handy for buying a home, once covid lockdowns eased slightly I was able to explore parts of Australia I’d never visited (Perth, North Queensland, Tasmania and New Zealand), working from home was great for my personal well-being and, most precious of all, I was able to reclaim my beloved dog from my parents, who had taken her in when I no longer had suitable accommodation many years before. Spending nearly all of Lucy’s last three years with her each day was probably the best thing that’s ever happened.
But I was overdue a break, which I have the fortunate luxury of being able to once again negotiate with my employer. Initially, when it became clear the middle of 2024 would be the best time to try again, I planned a do-over of sorts in America. But two things dissuaded me. The costs of travel in the US seem to have sky-rocketed since the pandemic and haven’t yet recovered any sort of equilibrium, and getting around America when you don’t drive is just *hard*. I want this particular trip to be easy, not hard.
So, Europe. Familiar territory, with decent infrastructure to make travel easy and efficient. This time I’ve got a Eurail global pass and, while I have a loose plan, it’s definitely not a fixed itinerary, and if I start to find I’m not getting full value from zoo visits I could very well just junk the plan and go sit on a beach for a while instead. For now I’m 5 days in and have spent today riding trains more or less at random around the Black Forest. I could live here, I think.
Another thing that I find hard, not easy, at the moment is writing. I do want to document this trip somehow, but the format I had in this thread seven years ago, of short essays about every zoo, with all the perceived pressure to keep producing fresh, interesting takes on the same basic genre of ‘zoo review’ just doesn’t really appeal to me this time.
What I’m going to try to do instead is a weekly round up, with short observations about collections visited that week. If I find it enjoyable I’ll keep it up. If I don’t, I won’t. I’m going to use this thread because I want anything I manage to write about this trip to be thought of as a coda to a revisited classic, rather than a n almost inevitably disappointing sequel.
All that said… the trip started with a leisurely, roughly six hour return visit to Frankfurt. I remember rating it as the tenth best zoo I visited in 2017, and as the best in its class of ‘small urban zoos’ - the sort with lots of classic architecture and historically too many animals on not enough hectares. Yet somehow Frankfurt manages to pack nearly all the big mammal ABCs (elephants and, as of late last year, rhinos the exceptions) into just 11 hectares, and nothing feels overcrowded or under-stimulated. The carnivore exhibits, in particular, remain world-class, albeit the lions and part of the spectacled bear habitats are currently undergoing renovations.
What makes Frankfurt iconic and such a rewarding place to come back to, though, is the great houses. Grzimek’s display quality isn’t perfect but it’s pretty good, and the collection remains sublime. Headlined, of course, by those aye-ayes. If what I saw them getting up to is a reliable guide, look out for news of another birth soon. I made three trips through Grzimek in total, rewarded by a great start to the European challenge.
The Exotarium presents a quandary. The building itself looks tired and in need of a refresh, but the exhibits - especially all the established tanks on the aquarium level - are absolute gems and I don’t want them to change a thing. I can’t quite say the same for the bird house, I’m afraid. I just never warmed to seeing birds behind glass in 2017, and seven years later I think I like it even less. Take down the windows, install netting or mesh wire according to individual species’ needs as in Berlin, and it would be one of the great European bird exhibits again.
I’m not sure if it was always like this and I just don’t remember or didn’t notice, but if not then most of the formal garden beds around the zoo have been transformed into native European meadow habitats for pollinators. It’s a great example of a zoo putting conservation values into direct action.
Oh. And one last thing. Being in the ape house when the bonobos get into a screaming match over fresh vegetables (one bonobo made off with no fewer than four sweet potatoes, another monopolised the capsicum) is a great way to go deaf.
Two days later, I braved patchily bad weather for my first ‘new’ zoo of the trip, Opel-Zoo in Kronberg, in the country outside of Frankfurt. Kronberg, as I will call it because I don’t really know what an ‘Opel’ zoo is, is a perfectly satisfactory second tier German zoo: not an essential visit but certainly a pleasant one.
The field exhibits, and especially the ones for deer and mouflon in the forest section up the hill (best viewed from a mulch track behind the paddocks), are precisely what I like to see most: simple barriers, lots of space, plenty of greenery. The overall effect is to show what Krefeld might become if it had Nuremberg’s ambition, but still had Krefeld’s budget. Collection-wise, the clear standouts were the striped hyenas, especially one hyena who was very much engaged with visitors. Especially small visitors, who had no idea why the nice big dog-like creature was staring at them quite so intensely.
Small visitors and the parents who take them to the zoo are clearly Kronberg’s core target demographic. Bags of carrots are available at the entrance and it’s obvious many of the hoofed animals, as well as the elephants, are accustomed to getting fed and spend much of their time begging at fences, which felt unfortunate. Elsewhere the zoo is full of family-friendly gimmicks like playgrounds and even sideshow games, but the zoo does a great job of separating out the fun fair elements from the zoo ones.
Rounding out this (hopefully) first instalment of this mini-reboot is Heidelberg Zoo. I’ve never been here before, but it already had a place in my heart because my partner and I used to live, and she still works, in Heidelberg (the Melbourne suburb). The Australian version has less masterpiece Renaissance architecture and more fish and chip shops - I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you prefer.
What both Heidelbergs have, as well as Kronberg for that matter, is dogs on leads everywhere. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to seeing dogs in zoos, and I was most astonished that one golden retriever was loyally following his owner, a zookeeper, on his keeping round! Maybe it was ‘Bring your pet to work day’? Anyway, I’m a confirmed dog person so they’re a welcome addition as far as I’m concerned. A group of coati at Kronberg might disagree, as a golden retriever took exception to them and its barking caused the coatis to repeatedly freeze, then scatter. I’ve thought a bit about this and I think it’s fine, actually: it’s not a bad thing for zoo animals to have their predator-awareness skills kept up to date while being perfectly safe in practice.
Heidelberg is another classic old city zoo that wears its wrinkles well. The highlight, apart from crowned sifakas, is clearly the bird collection, including such personal favourites as Papuan and rufous hornbills, and a pleasing range of (mostly) tropical species. The best part is there are three walk-through aviaries, focusing on South American rainforest species, Inca terms and a smattering of other waterfowl, and a second waterfowl aviary containing the inevitable Waldrapp ibises. I haven’t missed those ugliest of all bin chickens.
The first of the three walk-through was for Inca terns and was themed around a fisherman’s hut and small lighthouse, immediately bringing to mind the old seal and penguin coast exhibit at Bristol, which I never got to see. For the rest of the visit, I thought of Heidelberg as my surrogate Bristol, and I have no idea how accurate that is really but I liked the notion and I’m keeping it.
As I progressed through the zoo I noticed that it didn’t seem to have coped very well with rain earlier in the day, prior to my arrival, and I had to dodge and occasionally climb around puddles to access exhibits. But I managed to navigate just fine, even as the rain began to return in fits and starts.
Now, I want to say something about immersion - perhaps one of the most misused phrases in the zoo lexicon. For a while everything was an ‘immersion’ exhibit, from genuine technical masterpieces like Masoala to a mock rock ‘banyan tree’ in an African Savannah. I don’t dislike the concept - I think in the rare occasions where it’s done properly it has produced some of the very best exhibits in the world - but I’ve never bought into its central conceit, that it can cause a visitor to ‘forget’ they are in a zoo in a western city and imagine themselves transported to the tropics.
Heidelberg is a zoo of wood and wire, stately, if weathered, buildings and formal gardens in full spring bloom - about the closest it gets to the immersion concept is stands of bamboo here and there. But on the afternoon and evening of my visit it had a trick up its sleeve. At first I ignored the rumbling thunder, thinking it sounded far off enough not to be a worry, but as I was luckily approaching my last exhibits - a dated ape house and nearby old world monkeys house - a flash appeared. “Blitz!”, a number of Germans all exclaimed at the same time, and then the thunder was quite simply the loudest I’d ever heard. As the heavens opened, for once I really did feel transported from a western city to the equator.
It didn’t last long, and after huddling with a couple of dozen Germans under an only somewhat leaky dining marquee (with some hastily purchased pommes frites to justify my place in the semi-dry), I was able to finish the zoo after about 20 minutes of torrential downpour. The rain had put both me and a Roloway monkey in a mood, so we spent a few minutes baring our teeth at each other before the monkey got bored and returned to foraging. I think that means I’m the troop leader now.
I briefly attempted to retrace steps back to some exhibits with no-shows earlier in the day, especially the brilliantly named demonic poison dart frog, but the earlier puddles had turned into lakes, and much of the zoo had become impassable. Instead, I gave up and made the most of the post-storm light to wander around the Altstadt. I like Heidelberg very much.
more of them on that rock than fleas on a stray dog!
he says whilst on a sleeper train to Lisbon.
