Great day in the ZOO and 10 km run!!

Great day in the ZOO and 10 km run!!

Wow .. what a great Sunday! We got up early and drove down to Heidelberg to meet a couple we’re friends with and their two-year-old daughter at the Heidelberg ZOO!! What a great idea! We had a marvelous time and our kids were flabberghasted by all the great big animals like the elephants and tigers and so on. Children are just absolutely fascinated by animals; I must admit that adults like me are too.

I felt sad sometimes when I saw certain animals penned in the way they are and I am not happy with the way they are held, even though German standards seem to have nothing to criticize. I had a look at various species and felt they were not really happy but resignated. We humans do have an awful habit of wanting to control everyone and everything.

Never the less for the children this was an amazing expierience to see all these great animals and get an impression of their size and strength. All this was only in books until now and not more or less real than the witch that get’s shoved in the oven instead of the little boy she was going to eat! Now Artur has seen a tiger and some lions, has watched the great big elephant sucking up water with it’s trunk and so much more.

Heidelberg zoo also has a really special adventure playground with a kind of fortress for children to climb around in. Everything in there is very tight and constructed for kids up to about ten years of age at the most, anyone else gets near to stuck in there because it’s just too tight. Of course I had to get in with Artur who wanted to do it all really desperately but not on his own; so I had a really difficult time tunneling through this multi-story castle, climbing up steel-mesh pipes and sliding down tiny slide-shoots with an excited Artur on my lap! Outside of the fort is a super climbing and balancing parcour made of logs and ropes, just the right thing for children to learn good balance and coortidation.GREAT!

When we went both kids were absolutely whacked and didn’t need nuch more input for the rest of the day. Artur was jabbering on about tigers and lions and mummy- and daddy-elephants, instead of falling asleep when we got to a rather late bed-time. But he was completely happy about it all. What a day!

After a good break at home I went for a run doen by the river Rhein and did an easy ten km for the first time since getting this tick-desease. I really enjoyed it. It was the first time in about five weeks that I was capable of running this kind of distance in one piece and at a normal speed. I ran 10,1 km, pace 5.0 min per km; that’s just fine because I was not at my limit and was running easily. This was the first time I ran at a really normal pace again (as far as my habits are concerned.).

Get outside and move to your roots! wild-horse 08/2014