Wild und Wanderpark

Wild und Wanderpark

Today playgroup was at the wild park about 40 minutes from my house. I didn't really know what to expect but was thinking it was kind of like a Lion Country Safari type place (my Florida people know what I am talking about). It wasn't quite that but definitely worth the visit. Playgroup turned out to be a bust, I guess a lot of people weren't interested in driving that far and the others that did show up were very late because of a stau (traffic jam) on the highway. I made it there on time because I live farther away from the base than most people (and much closer to the park we were going to) so I didn't get caught in traffic. So Colin and I wandered around the wild park just the two of us and had a great time. As soon as we went through the gates right away we were greeted by two deer and a couple chickens. Colin was in awe of the deer and just stared at him (he was probably thinking wow that's a big doggie!) I immediately went to snapping pictures of the deer not realizing that there would be ample photo ops with all the overly friendly animals. I realized soon that they apparently sell boxes of food at the ticket counter and the animals know this. I didn't even have to pay for animal food and they were more than willing to come sniff me and make sure I didn't have anything and give me my up close and personal animal experience.

So far the animal parks in Germany have a rather odd assortment of animals (remember the zoo with the raccoons and parakeets on display?) and this place was no exception. They had lots of deer, lots of chickens, goats, more deer, ponies, bison, more deer, wolves, an owl, and more deer. One of the baby goats practically climbed in the stroller with Colin which he thought was fantastic. He petted the goat and pulled his ears just like he does with the dogs and then laughed when the goat made his little baaaaa goat noise. Then the goat started trying to eat the stroller and I had to shoo him off and that made Colin cry. Ooops.

The park itself is huge and you go on quite the hike to visit it all. I was expecting more of a nice ADA compliant type park with nice paths to walk on. Not so much! I've gone hiking in places far less treacherous than this and my platform flip flops were cute but useless. The paths are loose gravel and pretty steep in some places. I almost busted my butt a couple times, thankfully no one was around me so I didn't give the Germans yet another reason to laugh at the stupid American. After my workout/park tour it was lunch time so we sat down by the restaurant to eat. While we were eating I saw the other two people from playgroup who were stuck in traffic. We ate together and Colin and I shared an awesome banana split for dessert. Colin was in heaven, bananas and ice cream are two of his very favorite things! I definitely want to go back (in proper shoes) and take Shelby to the park and spend more time animal watching. They didn't have the most exotic animals but Colin loved seeing them up close and running around everywhere.