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Snowleopard's 2019 Road Trip: Netherlands, Belgium, France & Germany

Discussion in 'Europe - General' started by snowleopard, 15 Jul 2019.

  1. snowleopard

    snowleopard Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    Thanks for your comment and you are correct that I did forget about Planckendael's Tropical House. I'm not able to edit my original post, but that would be the 12th Tropical House (of a substantial size) on my journey and I enjoyed the one at Planckendael. I deliberately didn't include Antwerp's Butterfly House, or Artis's Forest House, or Artis's Butterfly Pavilion, etc., as I tried to focus on only the buildings of a large size and with more than just butterflies.
     
  2. Arizona Docent

    Arizona Docent Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Based on several points brought up in this thread, I have started a new thread to compare the similarities and differences between zoos in Europe and those in USA: Zoos in Europe vs USA
     
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  3. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Maybe a late reaction but today a study was publish about English spoken by people for which English is not their own language. The Netherlands are on place 1 ! In the last 9 years, in the same study, the Netherlands were always represented in the top 3.
    The other places were English is well spoken by the natives are
    2 - Sweden ( last years number 1 )
    3 - Norway
    4 - Denmark
    5 - Singapore
    6 - South Africa
    7 - Finland
    8 - Austria
    9 - Luxembourgh
    10 - Germany
    I'm however convinced that snowleopard discovered on the rest of his trip that most Dutch people do speak English quite well ;) !
     
    Last edited: 6 Nov 2019
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  4. snowleopard

    snowleopard Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    It was a bit of a culture shock when I was in Lelystad, literally on the very first day of the trip, and I couldn't seem to locate anyone who spoke English. Of course that initial foray into the Netherlands was an anomaly because later on I discovered that nearly every Dutch citizen could speak English. Lelystad is a fairly small, rural area with a tiny population and of course that is probably why there were a few non-English speaking individuals there.

    On a totally different topic, I ordered the book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes (written by Frans de Waal) based on the recommendation of a couple of zoo nerds that I met in Europe. It just arrived in the mail yesterday and it's the 25th anniversary edition (2007) and therefore there is an 8-page preface at the beginning of the book that wasn't part of the original book (1982). I'm excited to read it!
     
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  5. Pertinax

    Pertinax Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Its a very interesting book. I went to Arnhem around the time I first read it- some of the 'characters' in the book were still alive in their colony but I couldn't recognise any except a male Giambo who wasn't one of the originals, but had distinctive silvered hair. The dominant female 'Mama' died just a few years ago. There is a very touching video of Frans de Waal visiting her when she is near death, and she clearly recognises him and they embrace.
     
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  6. pipaluk

    pipaluk Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    As (ex) British colonies, do South Africa or Singapore really deserve any credit or a place on the list?!
     
  7. MRJ

    MRJ Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    I would have to agree that it is odd to include them in this list.
    • English is the native language of a substantial portion of the South African population
    • While this is not so in Singapore, many people use English as their primary language, to the extent there are dictionaries of Singaporean English.
    • In both countries it is an official language and the primary language of government and commerce.
    In other words a very different situation to the other countries mentioned.
     
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  8. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Evenso, they are "only" on place 5 and 6 ....
     
  9. pipaluk

    pipaluk Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Poor show I would suggest!
     
  10. Gondwana

    Gondwana Well-Known Member

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    I've been to South Africa a few times and in rural areas traveling with an Afrikaans speaker has come in handy more than once, so it isn't too surprising to me that South Africa isn't higher on the list. It's absolutely true though that menus, billboards, etc. are much more likely to be in English than in Afrikaans.
     
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  11. MRJ

    MRJ Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    I wonder what criteria authors of that list used? In Singapore for instance 36% of the population use English as a first, or home, language and is in fact the most widely spoken first language. I doubt 36% of Netherlanders use English as their first language. I wonder if they considered India, where while there are only 250,000 people using it as their first language, over 129 million speak it, and it is the second most widely spoken language (out of 140 spoken in that country). Still only 10% of Indians speak English.
     
  12. pachyderm pro

    pachyderm pro Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    The people have spoken and with nearly half the vote, Snowleopard’s 2019 Road Trip: Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany, has won thread of the year for 2019. Nice work @snowleopard.
     
  13. Cat-Man

    Cat-Man Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    where was the vote?
     
  14. snowleopard

    snowleopard Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    I'm going to bump this 2019 thread because it reached a wide audience. Some of the zoo nerds who contributed to the discussion have fallen off the radar and I would love to encourage them back onto the site.

    Since my mammoth 95 zoo, 33 day European trek, I then went to Denmark, Sweden and Norway in 2022 and documented that 24 zoo, 11 day journey on this thread:

    https://www.zoochat.com/community/t...ip-denmark-sweden-norway.484826/#post-1407179

    And now I've begun a new Snowleopard Road Trip, one that will see me visit 17 zoos in 12 days throughout California, Arizona and Oregon. I couldn't resist the lure of the world-class San Diego parks yet again! Here is that new thread:

    https://www.zoochat.com/community/t...3-road-trip-california-arizona-oregon.487990/
     
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