The Bats. Aka Schoenbrunn Tiergarten (zoo)

Nayeem, Liviu and Alina and I decided to go to the Schonbrunn Zoo for an afternoon after class. We met for lunch then went to the zoo. The Schonbrunn Zoo is the oldest zoo in Europe and it is very big and very nice. It had a lot of animals I'd never seen before, such as pandas and several European birds and animals. The first animals we saw were the koalas, which were adorable..

Then came the seals and sea lions.

And the poor baby that just wanted to go inside, so was acting all depressed.

Then there were the penguins. There were several types of penguins.

The normal penguins

The ugly pengiun who did not seem to understand the concept of glass...who was either sick or new to the idea.

The King Penguins that moved and looked like cartoons. Those were a bit weird to see in person.

The screaming penguin seen in the video above.

The creepy old men penguins.

The assortment of penguins

and finally, the tufty, molting penguin who seemed rather ashamed and hid in the corner.


So all was going well at the zoo until we hit the rooms of death...aka the Rainforest house.
For those of you who do not know, rather than having a monster under the bed as a child, I had a bat in my closet. So needless to stay, a slight fear (or big apparently) of bats had remained into adulthood. So I was completely horrified when I entered the Rainforest house and there were bats hanging freely on the ceilings. 20 or so of these bats. Free to fly around and attack me whenever they wanted!
with their gross, leathery wings and fuzzy heads!
I was handling the bats perfectly well until "the room" aka this dark room that you walk into and I was a bit apprehensive in the first place...But you enter the dark room AND THE BATS ARE FLYING AROUND WITH YOU! It is horrific!!!! I definitely sprinted through to the other side but I'm pretty sure that the bats touched me. yuck. it was awful. It was quite literally walking into my worst childhood nightmare!

so after that, we walked through the flora and fauna of the rainforest house, took some pictures in a tree house,

saw this snake that you walk directly underneath.

This thing called a "Schlammspringer" in German, aka a "Mudskipper"

and left the horror house.

As you leave the rainforest, you walk through all of these little aquariums with European fist, which were pretty cool.

One of them had a gigantic fish in it that terrified this poor little girl. It wasn't in view then shot out of the edge of the fish tank and she screamed and ran away. It was rather hilarious afterwards....

Then we saw the birds, an assortment of storks, pelicans etc. They were cool and had gigantic wingspans.
They also had really long necks...some of them at least.

Also, I think this picture is a bit reminiscent velociraptors and the Pterodactyls in Jurassic park...

Then came the Zebra mongeese which were interesting...


A few random other animals,
a gigantic turtle...

A crazy looking vulture...

There was a room where the monkeys were roaming free also, but that was not nearly as bad as the bats.

Though I had an embarassing dumb moment when I thought there were footprints of the monkeys on the floor but it was actually Alina's shoeprint.

The rhino's looked like they were wearing armor.

The lemur's were very cute. I like them. Specifically when they are tanning.


or looking embarassed.


The aquarium was nice too, but taking pictures in an aquarium is very difficult...but this video gives you a little idea.


So the zoo was a lot of fun.I saw lots of new animals that I hadn't seen before, despite having grown up in zoos and survived my worst nightmare!

This poster is all over Vienna for the Vienna dance festival (or something) and I think it is hilarious...