The depressing stuff...

Sunday night Jes and I were totally wiped and so decided something had to give. We'd had enough of old buildings and old bridges and old art, so decided to do something fun and normal. So Monday morning, we packed up our things and headed off to the zoo!

This was all very exciting, and even thought our tummies were feeling real yuk, we thought that a whole bunch of cute and scary animals would cheer us up. Which they did, for the most part. We saw all the big cats, which I guess is the most depressing part of the whole experience. I don't know if I totally believe in zoos, but I guess the conservation work and breeding programs and etc are necessary and good, so maybe they are ok. The cats are depressing because they're so big, and they're generally in relatively small enclosures. Which I know is just the 'public' enclosure, and they have more room out back, but it's still not a lot, is it? They'll never know what it's like to run a whole lot, run like 300metres through grass and trees and stuff. And they're MEANT to do that. But then I guess I'm 'meant' to do a lot of things that I don't do, including running 300metres, or any number of metres. But I get to choose that. Anyway. The cats. They were so cool, obviously, because they are amazing and sleek and agile and will kill you. The tigers were... wow. So there's the big tiger enclosure, which was actually pretty snazzy, I guess because tigers are sexy and sell magazines, so they get the better stuff. So you look at the enclosure from the front and the sides and from the back, but the back is through a pane of glass, cos you're kinda 'in' the enclosure when you go through the back entrance. One tiger, the lady, was pacing up and down this strech of glass, only like 3 metres long, while we stood there, on the other side, staring at her. She was like 5cm from our faces. It was absolutely amazing. She just looked like a really really big Ding Ding, with stripes, and teeth the size of my face, and paws the size of dinner plates. The monkeys were pretty cool, too, specially the babies. One chimp was getting chased by the others and got so scared he did a poo. Then a baboon was masturbating but realised everyone was watching so turned around to face away from the crowd. And we think maybe another monkey was performing a sex act on the big boss monkey, because he was smiling and all we could see was the back of her head. ANYWAY. So the zoo was great, we saw penguins (which we learned from our time watching Animal Planet in Holland are the most inefficient walkers in the world) and seals and elephants and giraffes. The giraffe keeper was yelling at them in German because they wanted food and he had none so was kicking them out of the feeding pen. It was funny, because even though you know giraffes don't speak English, you think maybe they might understand a little bit, but German? No. Giraffes do not speak German. We also went into the childrens petting zoo to feed goats and ponies, and we got goat spit on our hands and then forgot to wash them before lunch. All the parents brought their kids in there to get up close to a baby goat, but the kids were TERRIFIED and screaming and crying, desperately trying to get away. We also saw the baby polar bear, Knut, but he wasn't a baby anymore, he was just a big bear eating a fish. Funny how all the signage is still him as a little cub, all cute and white and playing with butterflies. Walking past the wolf enclosure, we saw them eating some meat and stuff. Jes waved at me madly and yelled across the zoo "DAN! A wolf doing poo!" She wasn't lying. He was doing poo.

This was very sad, a lion by himself in a concrete room. But it was just his pre-feeding room, so after being in there he got to eat. Or before. He was separated from the girls, at any rate. He looked so fuckin depressed, but then got up and was running around. It's the eyes, the Labrador eyes that make your heart break in two.

Me and elephants! One of them was real hungry and kept banging on the door of that building to let the waiter know he was ready to eat now.

Jes and the pygmy zebras.

Video time! Excuse the poor quality of the tiger one, but you get the idea.





I filmed this penguin about 8 times for like 20 minutes total, waiting for him to just JUMP. He never did. He ran back and forth over and over. Idiot.





Tuesday we went to Sachsenhausen, which is a concentration camp about 45 minutes outside Berlin. It was pretty heavy and moving and very uncomfortable. We got there and bumped into Jessy, the girl who was our tour guide last week. She was there to do a private tour, but suggested we jump onto another one that her colleague was running, so we tagged along with his, and didn't have to pay which was pretty nice. We tipped him good. He took us around the facility, which has both original buildings but also reconstructions. Much of it was destroyed or burnt down, so some of the buildings there now are purely for memorial purposes. The stories were horrible, the living conditions were horrible, and I guess we all know the stuff that happened. It was mostly a men's camp, with a small number of women kept in a bordello for the high-performing soldiers. What struck me the most was how much like a business it all was, and how it was about effective use of money and space and resources. For example, it was found that large camps had lower productivity than smaller camps. And so smaller camps were built instead, littered throughout the countryside, pockets here and there. Sachsenhausen was a 'model' camp, the camp that international dignitaries were brought to, kept all nice and clean and maintained, unlike other camps like Auschwitz whose appearance reflected the activity going on inside. From what I understood, it was also a 'base' for these smaller camps, so people ate and slept there, but often went out to do manual labour elsewhere. That's probably wrong, but at any rate, it was real bad. The most fucked up bit was the killing rooms. The buildings are gone, but their foundations are still there, and you can walk through them. Obviously no-one had any interest in rebuilding or replicating the rooms, so you have to use your imagination, which I guess is bad enough, and still not anywhere near bad enough. The gas chambers and portable gallows were really scary. I kinda felt a bit sick at the end of the whole thing.

Jes is sick today with a bit of a fever and a tummy issue, which is still affecting me, too. We're eating real light in an attempt to shake it.

Prague tomorrow, instead of Switzerland. Expensive, but hopefully a great way to end my trip. I'll fly from there to London for one last night with Beth and George, then to Heathrow for the leg home! Looking forward to my little weekend stopover in Tokyo, too. Tiiiiiiiiiiight.

xd