my brother, his wife, and my nephew came to visit me in vienna, and planned to go to schoenbrunn zoo, since my nephew wanted to see elephants, crocodiles, hippopotami, and giraffes in real life. those animals he asked specifically for, the rest was bonus. so we grabbed our camera gear and went on an educational family photo-safari trip. since it was the first warm weekend day in this year, tons of people had the same idea as we had. additionally there was also the vienna city-marathon today, so even more people going outside. but still, we enjoyed all the animals. my nephew got to see the meerkats[02-04], giraffes[06-07,09], koalas[10-11], the hippos[12-13], not so real cats[14-16], but also real cats[21-25], seals[26], and the all-time super-cute red pandas[28-29]. some reptiles[30], flamingos[31], sea creatures[32-34], and turtles[36] followed. after a short ice and ice-coffee break[37-38], we headed back to the elephant house where there was feeding time. to get their treat, the elephants had to perform loads of little tricks, which was nice to watch. after several hours at the zoo, my nephew got quite the animal overload. too much new beings, each of them an exciting new experience. so we went home, watched the pictures taken during our trip, and went to bed early, since we all were pretty tired. yet, a fun day for all of us.

nina said she had a surprise for me this weekend. but thanks to the google bar on her browser, which still showed the last search she did, i figured out we would go to the zoo haag. because they have lynx and lion cubs there - aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw! so we drove by train to stadt haag, then went on by foot to the zoo. ah, if you happen to have the "zoo card" (which gives discount on entry, zoo shop items, etc. in zoos all over austria and is for free if you have the zoo schoenbrunn year pass) show it, as you get free entrance in haag too - what a nice surprise, as it said nowhere on the pricing information board, and we hoped to get one or two euros off the price with the zoo card. and so we headed straight for the lion cage and found all four cubs[010-072] sleeping and cuddling. sooooooooooooooo cute! all of them. soon it got too hot for them, so they moved to the shadows. but their we couldn't see them that good anymore, so we moved on to the five lynx cubs[074-102]. but unfortunately they were also positioned in a way that we couldn't really get a good look on them. but once in a while a little lynx cub head was popping up and looking at us. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, also so cute! then it was time for a break from all this cuteness, so we went on and had a look at all the other animals at the zoo, like bears, donkeys, deer, crows and ravens, etc. it seemed like the zoo only mentioned the lion cubs on their website and in local newspapers, but not the lynx cubs, as most of the visitors didn't know about them. it was getting pretty hot now in the zoo, so we took a little break, had a coffee and a snack, to once more return to the lion cubs[161-282]. this time they were awake and quite active, nibbling at each other, or mother's tail, ears, or whatever they got in their tiny mouth. it was so much fun to watch them (that's why we took millions of pictures of them. a small collection is what you can see at the online gallery). thanks nina for the "surprise" - what a day of cuteness overload!

this weekend we went to tyrol to see the newly arrived cats named bonny & candy at nina's parents. they are ragdoll cats, named so because they hang like dolls once you grab them at their neck and lift them up like cat mothers do (although we didn't try that). the ragdoll is a cat breed that is said to be very docile and person oriented, very intelligent (well, which cat ain't?), and loves to cuddle. all of this we found to be true. aaaaaaw, so fluffy, so tiny, so shiny, so cuuuuute!