February 25, 2013

Monkey Business

You would never have guessed exactly what i did on Christmas day.

i celebrated with animals at a zoo! 😀

When Leo first proposed the idea to me, i was secretly sceptical. “What do people actually do during Christmas?” i asked, afraid i might miss out another awesome tradition like Heiliger Vormittag.

“Well, people spend time with their family”, was his answer. “Look, the reason why we are visiting the zoo today, is because tomorrow it will be full of people.”

And he was damn right. The next day as we drove by the Wilhelma, we saw an outstretched queue outside the magnificent gate* and i sure felt like we won a big lottery.

*Wilhelma was originally a royal palace, and it looked like this:

{photo credit: Wikipedia}

Today, the zoo is famous for keeping all kinds of great apes (you will most definitely see them below), whereas its botanical gardens contain Europe’s biggest magnolia grove.

Our day started early, the minute dawn broke loose in hues of bright salmon and pink. Every morning i woke up to see an ever changing ‘painting’ of the beautiful sky framed by a window in the room i made Slumberland. Usually it looks like this, but if you are lucky, sometimes you get streaks of warm sunlight tingling at your toes; should you decide to sleep in on a lazy winter day. On other days, you might just get ’50 shades of grey’ as your painting-of-the-day. Still, it is always a thrill to wake up and find out just how affectionate the weather can be to the nonetheless warm neighborhood of Plochingen.

After two buns and a dozen varieties of spread sampled for breakfast, we were happily on our way to the zoo. Not trying to sound like a bumpkin, but i couldn’t help myself squealing in delight when i saw adorable black elephants painted across the overhead bridge. Such is tiny, little effort worth appreciating, don’t you agree? Think of the wild tree branches covering half the sign boards in Malaysia, and how nobody could be bothered to chop therm off for all the reasons they should! Useless buggers. Anyway, tattooed bridge(s) for smiles:

{baby elephant inked on zoo signboard by the road – in case a tourist like me, doesn’t know that Wilhelma is a zoo}

{elephantine cactuses with Herculean needles at the botanical garden}

{wild flower(s) and chirpy bird(s)}

Like i mentioned, this marvellous zoo cum botanical garden is known for housing 4 kinds of great apes. i for one regrettably don’t grow an interest big enough to know their names, but you will see below some interesting pictures of their mischiefs:

{hairy baboon showing me his middle finger}

Much to my disappointment, i won’t be able to showcase much of my magic UNIQLO feather lite vest ala outfit post because truth is, it rained 70% of the time. On a brighter note, fortunately there is as much indoor part of the zoo as outdoors; thus we managed to spend the day admiring cute animals, rare jellyfishes, and hundred species of butterflies . . .

{the animal residents of Wilhelma are not migrated from foreign countries, but born and breed in Germany so that they are used to the local environment instead of having to go through the awful process of adjusting themselves to survive in an absolutely new habitat. how very thoughtful! 😀 }

{late lunch – my very first time trying Geschmelzlte Maultaschen mit Kartoffelsalat}

By 4 p.m., the German skies had changed from pink to grey back to dark blue, but that didn’t stop us from loading our ambitious schedule with all the possible activities we could find (it is not an easy mission as most places are closed on Christmas day). In no time we were on a slippery drive to Stuttgart city where Avengers was shot, and we certainly took some shots there ourselves.

Thanks to Leo’s boundless determination and adventurous spirit i unexpectedly did the bravest thing in my life – to stand outside an observation deck at an altitude of 1,585 feet high at Stuttgart Fernsehturm, the world’s first TV tower built from concrete. It is not the height that rattles your frozen bones, but the wild winter wind that is literally strong enough to blow half a man away!

{my favourite (tomato) juice and thoughtful condiments to accompany + gazing at the glittering world of glimmering night lights from up, up above}

And that was how i spent my Christmas day. How did you spend it? 😉