Category Archives: Travels

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Travels

Neumünster Zoo

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Another blog post about a Zoo? Yes, as you can see I really do love to visit those places. This particular Zoo is a pretty small one here in my hometown. During my childhood I have been there very often and in the past years also again several times with my wife and some friends. The best thing about this Zoo is that it is close by, really just 15 min by bicycle or 5 min by car.

It has been found 1951 as a place where only animals from this region were shown. They kept this idea for a long time but later expanded and have now also monkeys, polar bears and penguins. The entire place is located within a part of the local forest which gives you a different feeling for the place than other Zoos which are normaly not so heavily grown into a forest.

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The polar bear died few months later due to high age

 

At least during my childhood the little shoats (baby boars) were able to squeeze below the fence and ran crazily around harassing visitors to give them some food. I don’t know if it still the case as I have been in the Zoo in the past years only during winter time. Another nice thing there is the Barbary macaque enclosure as you can enter it and walk on a path through. Usually all the Barbary apes will come to the path expecting some food or just try to grab anything you have in your hands.

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Barbary ape posing with her child

 

All the pictures are from our visit there in 2010. I believe it was the first time for me there in over 10 years and much had changed such as the new penguin enclosure and the monkey park. As you can see there are goats…many goats, too many goats! The goat world is located next to an old farm building and is very popular with the kids (nearly as popular as the playground). You can enter the enclosure and feed the goats but often you have to watch out that those demon animals don’t get too greedy as they might follow you later on through half of the park (did I mention that they can leave their enclosure?). Now that I think about it there are actually few animals enclosures you can enter and feed the animals with the food bought at the ticket office.

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My brothers girlfriends best friend at the Zoo

 

Even though this is just a small Zoo with very limited funds they still manage to keep everything well maintained unlike the Chinese ones I have been to so far. The animals seem to be taken good care of and nowhere is trash to be found except of course the trash bins. Especially the trash thing however might be more related on the general attitude of the people as in China I even saw some throwing trash and even cigarettes on the animals.

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Gaots AND Geese chaising us!

 

In May few Chinese friends from Finland will come over for a week or so and I had the idea to visit the Zoo with them. During that time also MIL will be still with us so we can just leave her in the goat enclosure as she seems to like it with those animals.  Hopefully she will stay there for some time but I still believe dropping her at the Outlet Center for a week is the more effective way to get rid of her for a while.

 

 

Do you know any small Zoo’s such as this one?

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Crazy Family, Travels

The Time we saw Pandas

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Perhaps you remember from my previous post that we did not see any Pandas in the Qinling Zoological Park in both of our visits. But we actually never went there mainly to see these cute animals as we had the perfect location to see them: Shaanxi Wild Animal Conservation Research Centre

My wife’s godfather invited us to that place back in 2011 when my parents were in China as well. Basically he (the godfather) knows someone who knows somebody who was able to get us access to that place for free as there are usually no visitors except of course some well-paying tour groups. I believe it used to be more like a little zoo before as there were still signs and paths all around that place but in a very poor condition. Furthermore to get there was like a maze as towards the end the mini bus had to drive through very small streets of some village to get into a mountain path in the forest. I guess the village just expanded over the years and swallowed the road leading to this research center.

 

CIMG3123I knew already about this place prior to this visit as my wife had pictures on her Facebook with Pandas before we even started dating. So from her I knew already that there were many Pandas and baby Pandas around at least when she was there. As you know my luck by now there were no cute baby Pandas at this place when we visited. To make it even worse they had only a very limited number of these animals as most were at the Xi’an China International Horticultural Exposition 2011…

 

But we did see a few Pandas but sadly they were already too big that we were not allowed to enter the cage to feed them. Usually this would have been already enough for us but godfather had another surprise for us, the only brown coloured Panda in the world! As you can see now that the world already knows about this animal however back then it was still a secret and thus we were not allowed to take any pictures.

 

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Little fluffy fluff fluff!

Besides the Giant Pandas there were many other animals such as one of the rarest birds in the world the crested ibis or other animals such as the red panda, leopards and the golden monkey. All in all I can say it was a very interesting trip no matter if there were only a few Pandas to be seen as we learned many interesting facts about the rare species in that research center. I can just recommend to visit this place if you ever have the chance.

 

Have you ever seen Pandas close up or other rare animals?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Travels

Visiting the Qinling Zoological Park

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During the trips to China we have visited few places there. However those places were always nearby Xi’an as my dear wife turn into a role model couch potato once she arrives in her parents apartment. Usually the only means to get her away from the beloved sofa and TV are either restaurants or animals. In this case animals worked as we manged to even go twice to the Qinling Zoological Park.

The Park itself is roughly 28km away from Xi’an and is located, as the name suggests, at the starting point of the Qinling Mountain Range. The Park is advertising to have more than 300 animal species including the Giant Panda! But more about it later on…

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It was pretty exciting for me there the first time as I just love good Zoo’s. This one even offered some kind of safari tour in which you sit in the back of a truck with metal bars around to be protected against more dangerous animals. Of course I wanted this tour as I never had experienced something like that before.

At the beginning of the Zoo is even a little theme park. My in-laws offered that we go there however it didn’t look too safe in my opinion and I was pretty much right about it. Why you may ask well, a couple of years later there was an accident at the theme park with three people injured. Of course this could happen in any theme park but when I see that the amusement rides are full of rust and some parts fell already off I just don’t really have the urge to try it out myself.

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Right after you enter the Zoo the different trucks wait for paying visitors to take the little safari tour. Needless to say that MIL was the first at the different trucks trying to get few spots for us as well. Though the whole tour is interesting I must say that the truck just drives too quickly through the different sections resulting that you don’t have time to watch the animals nor take proper pictures. For me the beginning of the tour with the giraffes, zebras, camels and so on was much more interesting than the later part with the dangerous wolves, lion and tigers as those were always sleeping some distance away in the shadows. The safari area is enclosed and each part is separated from each other by double gates to prevent animals to get out or people to get in. This on the other hand didn’t stop in 2010 a father and his son to enter the tiger area…(when researching this in Chinese you find out that those two didn’t even had tickets for the Zoo and no one knows how they even could enter!)

After the safari tour you can start the normal tour and go around following the many paths. The map you get with the tickets give a nice overview where to find what animals as otherwise walking around the whole park surely takes nearly an entire day. Now we come back to the Giant Pandas. Everywhere is advertised that there are Pandas and not only I wanted to see them but the rest of my Chinese family as well. You can imagine our disappointment when there were no Pandas in the enclosure! Now, this could have been just coincidence, perhaps they were somewhere else on that day but no. When I was there a year later there were again no Pandas and reading several reviews it seems that barely anyone has ever seen them there.

Anyways the Zoo is huge so after a while we forgot again about the Pandas and were doing our round to see all kind of different animals. Some places looked even really nice such as the little lake with the different water birds. The Zoo has even a little water show with different kind of seals. Not only allowed it us to sit down for a while but after the show was done we had  the opportunity to take pictures together with one of the seals. I think MIL wanted to take the seal with her but FIL wouldn’t allow it…

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You know what? Even though I just love Zoo’s and this one has a huge variety of animals it is definitely not my favorite one. For one, everything appears to be in a bad condition as if nothing has been really maintained for years. All over the park you can see these kind of things. From rusted amusement rides for the children within the park (not the theme park in front of the Zoo) over dried out water areas to buildings with huge cracks and holes in the roofs! I haven’t been in any other zoo’s in China yet but I really hope this is not the norm. I mean this park has many positive reviews from Chinese but many bad ones from  foreigners.

I don’t want to say the park is bad as it offers a nice day trip away from the city however I would not recommend it as a main thing to see when visiting Xi’an as there are many other and better things to see. In case they would really start taking better care of the entire Zoo in terms of actually repairing broken things, make it look more inviting including improving the animals enclosures I will definitely go there again and perhaps then recommend it but not right now.

 

What are your experiences when visiting Zoo’s? Have you ever been in a Chinese Zoo?

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