The Zoo Hirschfeld

Due to the corona we had the taste to visit different animal parks in 2020, of course because they were mostly open and therefore less restricted, but also because we like animals and were already in South Africa at the beginning of the year. So far we had already visited the animal enclosure Waldhaus near Greiz, the zoo in Gera, the Leipzig Zoo, the zoo in Erfurt and the wild cat village Hütscheroda – all of them only one hour train ride away at most. Now we had to look a little more outside and that’s when my mother recommended the Hirschfeld Zoo, which is not far from Greiz in the direction of Zwickau. Supposedly I had already been there as a little child, but I absolutely could not remember it. So on one of the last weekends in October, when it wasn’t raining, we first took the train to Greiz and then my mother and I drove to Hirschfeld by car.

After about half an hour we reached the zoo, but were a bit surprised by the entrance, where not a single guest was to be seen. As it turned out later, the navigation system guided us to the back of the park. But this was not a tragedy, because here was also the miniature golf course we wanted to go to after the zoo anyway.

In the zoo there were really many different animals to admire, such as bisons from Poland (which we couldn’t see during our vacation in Poland only 2 months before due to bad timing), snow foxes, snowy owls, wolves, bears, porcupines, capybaras and many more. The only strange thing was the circular path of the park, because in the end you had to walk up to three different rounds to really see all the enclosures. Sometimes you could enter the enclosures, so that you could stroke the animals or see them very close, like with the pigs, owls, goats or donkeys.

After visiting all the enclosures we walked back to the center of the zoo where the restaurant “Bärenschenke” is. Here we wanted to have lunch and thought it was a normal restaurant. Actually it was more like a canteen where you could get mainly meat dishes with potatoes, dumplings or dumplings. But Nathalie was very satisfied with a meatless pumpkin soup and a salad. We did this and the food was really very good – at least in negative comparison to the university refectories in our cities.

After dinner and a short break we walked back to the back exit where we could rent the equipment for the mini golf course at the ticket counter. In contrast to the morning, it was now a little warmer and therefore more pleasant to play there. There were 18 holes in total and they were much bigger than the ones we already knew in Plauen, where I played mini golf with Nathalie for the last time. The wind and the autumn leaves on the courses were a bit annoying, but we were able to get rid of them quickly. Another extraordinary course was the one in the middle, which required you to shoot a hole across the whole width of the course in one shot – almost like real golf. But this was rather difficult, as you can imagine…. especially because you only had one mini golf club.

The result of the minigolf game was again similar to the one in Plauen: I had won with the fewest (mistake) points, then came Nathalie and then my mother. I just had to prove again who is the “King” here ;P

Afterwards we went back to Greiz by car and then by train to Weimar. We were lucky that the weather was fine all day, because the next Monday it started raining hard again. But the day at the Hirschfeld Zoo was really nice and at the end I could remember very little about the place when I saw the different enclosures and playgrounds which were really family friendly.