Berlin's Zoological Garden (Zoologischer Garten Berlin)

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Zoologischer Garten Berlin
Date:	06/09/00 (142 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absolutely vast, the many animals seemed for the most part well cared for

Disadvantages: Very very big - so it takes a lot of time to see everything, and little ones might get fed up!

Berlin's Zoo is located right in the centre of the commercial district of West Berlin, just a couple of minutes walk from the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche, and opposite the Zoologischer Garten S-bahn and U-bahn station.

I hadn't really planned on visiting the zoological gardens during my visit to Berlin in August 2000, but I was disappointed to find that many of the city's museums and galleries are closed on Mondays – the zoo was one of the few attractions which wasn't.

The zoo consists of the west-most portion of the Tiergarten, a large park in the centre of Berlin which was once a royal hunting estate. The land was made into a zoo in 1844, making it one of the oldest zoos in the world.

The monkey house, in particular, is very impressive, with a very large collection of different species of primates, including large families of gorillas and orang-utans. There is a very large sunken enclosure housing a very big group of baboons too. A large darkened area beneath one of the pavilions is home to nocturnal creatures, including aardvarks and bats. Pretty much every creature you'd expect to see in a zoo is here; polar bears, hippopotami, camels, giraffes, elephants, flamingos, lions and tigers, to name just a few.

Probably the star attraction of the zoo is the giant panda, Bao-Bao, who always has a collection of gawping tourists staring at him.

Generally, the animals seemed pretty happy and had adequately large enclosures, however, we did see one serval restlessly pacing up and down in a relatively small enclosure, which was a bit distressing. Other than that though, the animals seemed very well cared for. In many of the pavilions, you could watch keepers prepare food for the animals, and (if your German was up to it) ask them questions. The zoo seemed to be quite conscious of animal welfare concerns, and appeared to be involved in several breeding programmes - a baby elephant had recently been bor
n at the zoo when I visited, and a female giant panda from Chengdu in China was um… visiting Bao-Bao.

The zoo itself is absolutely massive, and it could easily take up most of a day if you have nothing else to do. This does unfortunately mean that there's a lot of walking involved, so those with young children should be warned! It's not one of the cheapest attractions in Berlin, but the sheer number of animals in the zoo easily justifies the cost a visit!

I didn't actually visit the aquarium in the Zoologischer Garten, but it is apparently one of the largest in Europe, containing sharks, piranhas and fish from all over the world. Frankly, the zoo alone is enough to occupy most visitors, I would have thought, and there is an additional fee to visit the aquarium.

Summary: