Sunday morning dawned bright and clear with blue sky and sunshine and I was off on a day trip with friends. We had decided to visit a wild park in Ernstbrunn (around 40km from Vienna). On the way to the park we passed a pumpkin stall and although it looked pretty it made me sad. Definite proof that summer is over.
Once we arrived the others were already waiting for us and we started with our discovery tour. I didn’t know what to expect from the park since I had never been there and was pleasantly surprised by it and the animals. It turned out that the park was way better than I could have ever imagined. Lush rolling hills and meadows, deers strolling around freely and nibbling corn from your open palm. Not mine though, actually find it quite gross. But the kids loved it!
One of the first animals we met was a billy-goat and my friend and Mr. Goat seemed to get along just fine.
But when it came to PDA he looked a bit miffed.
One has to draw a line somewhere!
From there we moved on to the ibexes, young and old were happy to feed them and felt probably at ease with nature/their inner child (or whatever; while I was writing the post I noticed that I hadn’t fed one animal. Weird…on the other hand I was taught never to play with my food).
All of a sudden an ear-piercing ululation could be heard. The wolves were starting to get jealous and wanted to draw attention to themselves. Now those were really way behind fences and no feeding was allowed. Probably better otherwise there might have been a lot of running and screaming later (© Dr. Ian Malcolm aka Jeff Goldblum in ‘The lost World: Jurassic Park’… sorry couldn’t resist, just saw it last night. He was really good-looking back then. Don’t know about now, would have to look it up. Anyway I am starting to ramble here). Pictures might be a bit blurred due to the distance.
The daring ones climbed the fences to check out the wolves from above.
The lone four-pawed ‘wolf’ we had with us was not so lucky to be behind a fence. Lilly was hugged, shared and petted and suffered it all with a stoicism that was endearing.
The only two-legged ‘wolf’ meanwhile was in charge of the baby and nobody would have dared to pet him!
The excitement of the wolf-watching left us light-headed and hungry so we walked on to the ‘witches-kitchen’, a small restaurant within the park set in a meadow next to a pond. At first I didn’t believe my eyes when a deer was passing in front of us.
Ok, ok, so there were real ones too.
I was more into the Scottish Highland cow (so what if I thought that steak might be tender while petting it?).
Well, we all had a great day! Always a good base for a repeat performance.
Yours, Pollybert
