Part One
Among the regal white horses pulling carriages, the polished
ivory marble buildings and obviously the tourists, deep in the heart of Vienna, Austria lays the oldest
zoo in the world. Before you get there though, you’ll have to embark on a
journey through the Schönbrunn
and it’s grounds. It’s not that it’s strenuous by any means, its simply jaw
dropping and the attention to detail is remarkable. Marked as the summer home
for the old royals, this palace has neatly paved gardens that could only have
been achieved by someone with OCD. The grass is neatly positioned beside a
collection of white rocks that form a path. It’s as if nothing ever grows out
of it’s own place and the flowers never bloom any way but up. On the walk from
the palace, through the gardens, you walk through a small forest, also paved to
perfection. Big leaves on walnut trees have been trimmed and clipped to form an
arch, leaving only a sliver of sky to shine through. Although as an adult I am
amazed at the parks perfection, my mother tells me when I was a little girl, we
would come here on walks everyday and the moment she lost sight of me I was
tugging on the tall flowers simply trying to pull them closer than we so I
could look them in the face.
Much like the extravagant palace and the magical gardens,
the animals at the zoo seem to get a royal treatment as well. There are some
zoos that house their animals in depressing cages and others that house them in
lackluster enclosures. Vienna on the other hand, built an intricate habitat for
every single creature here; therefore I spent about eight hours feeling like I
was in the wild. The employees do such a great job of leaving the windows
streak free that sometimes I forgot there was even glass between the animals
and I. More so than any other zoo I have visited in the world, all of these
animals were happy. I didn’t catch a single animal pacing in its cage and many
of them were eager to interact. Speaking of interacting, they even have a bat
cave that you can walk through with hundreds of bats flying freely. You can’t
walk through the cave without being swiped by at least 20 bats. If that sort of
thing isn’t for you, there is an option to go around this habitat and continue
on your journey.
At many times throughout my visit, I felt as if I was in
dozens of countries in the span of just eight
hours. I felt as if I were in the Tibetan mountains with snow leopards or in
the South American rainforest with a variety of monkeys swinging freely or
chasing butterflies right above your head. The African habitat houses giant
leathery rhinos and I never thought I could get that close to a baby elephant.
If I reached over far enough, probably doing one of those Pilates stretches, I’d
surely be able to touch most of the animals. That’s the thing here in Austria -
no one does that. Everyone enters this zoo knowing they paid about 25 Euro to
be in a world that’s not their own. As soon as I entered, I knew I was stepping
into a world of animals, and I was simply just a fly on their trees, instead of
the other way around.
To Be Continued…
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