Kölner Zoo

sleeping flamingos

Sunday is an interesting day in Germany because most shops and grocery stores are closed. For foreigners who come from countries were shops are open seven days a week it can be a big adjustment to figure out what to do on this day. I still have a hard time understanding why shops and grocery stores are closed on Sundays. For someone who works during the week it seems so natural to save up time to go shopping for the weekend, which more often than not includes Sundays, but not here. While in Germany I have had to find other ways of entertaining myself on Sunday.

This past weekend I pondered for a while whether or not I wanted to make it a lazy Sunday or actually enjoy the sun for a while. After looking up things to do in the area I came across the Köln zoo website. It had been a while since I had been to a zoo and I thought it would be a wonderful way to spend the day. As it was sunny and Sunday, and there weren’t many other businesses open, it was a packed house.

The strange looking Okapi

Every parking lot surrounding the zoo was completely full and we had to drive about a mile down the road to find a free place.

I really had a wonderful time at the zoo and was surprised at how long it took us to see all that the zoo had to offer. It took us over five hours to finish the tour, which I thought was quite impressive for a zoo that is in the middle of a busy city. There are over 500 species to see at the zoo from all of the continents, except Antarctica, and also many fish from the world’s oceans.

Here are some of the highlights from my zoo trip. The pink flamingos. I love these birds and I am always so impressed with how they are able to balance on their one extremely skinny leg while they sleep. The giraffes were amazing, and I hadn’t seen a giraffe since I was a little girl, maybe around seven. Seeing them was a great treat, especially because I think that their coats are so beautiful, and also, the okapi, which was a new animal to me. They are related to giraffes, look like a horse, but have legs with stripes like that of a zebra.

They have a great website too: www.zoo-koeln.de