Sunday at the Zoo

I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment. Since the weekend I’m feeling rather listless. Unmotivated to do anything. And the less I actually do the more I am annoyed with myself for being such a lazy bum. But I can’t help it. I’m glad that it’s rather easy going at work at the moment, so I’m not getting behind on my assignments there. I really really should work much more on my termpaper, but I’m not really busy with that right now either. Even though I should be!

I should stop whining! Maybe I also should stop watching or reading every piece of news I get about the tragic events at the Loveparade on Saturday. Death count is up to 21 and the people in charge still blame each other and nobody wants to admit that they anything wrong. It’s sickening and maddening and… Ugh. I really should stop watching it.

Sorting my pictures from Sunday’s trip to the zoo cheered me up a bit at least. I got this visit (all inclusive *g*) as birthday present from a friend and we finally managed to make that trip to the Zoom Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen. (German Website, the English version is under construction unfortunately). It’s a very modern zoo with lots of space and basically no cages, at least not like the ones in the last century. The zoo is divided into three “continents”: Alaska, Africa and Asia with the associated animals. Alaska was the first part of the zoo to be open to public, Africa followed in 2008 and Asia was opened this spring, so that was where we went first.

I have to admit that Asia was a bit disappointing to me because this part is smaller than I expected (compared to the other parts) and I expected elephants and tigers India and the jungle an all. But I guess because there wasn’t enough space to keep these animals when the concept of the zoo is to keep the animals as species-appropriate as possible. A zoo is never species-appropriate, but I hope you know what I mean…

But there were Orang Utans and camels and a jungle house… nice all in all, but not that stunning altogether.

We went to Africa next and there is always so much to see. But quite a few of the animals were lazy and sleepy that day. Well, it was Sunday after all, so I can’t blame them :-) One of the amazing things about this zoo is, that you can get really close to the animals or at least you feel like you do.

We were at the hippos just in time for their feeding and they were definitely happily munching :-)

Alaska was the last continent of our tour and it was and still is my favourite. Owls, racoons, reindeers, bears, seals, polar bears, wolves and … moose. Yay! But of course there also was Sunday in Alaska and the animals were chilling out. Well, some of them… The polar bears were active at least ;-)

I’ve always loved moose. Maybe because I have a thing for Sweden and Canada. Or because they are looking so unique. While I was living in Stockholm in 1997/1998 I somewhere read a description of their character. Unfortunately I never found that quote again. But this characterizationmade me fall in love with them even more, because they are basically my animal counterpart: hoggish, lazy and clumsy. LOL.

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