I'm hoping to squeeze in a week long trip to Poland this late March/April so I'm on the hunt for suggestions / recommendations for travel and zoos to visit. Poznan (both of them) and Wroclaw are on the list, and I'd love to organise a trip to Bialowieza forest, probably from Warsaw (which would therefore add the zoo to the list) or Bialowieza itself. Lodz zoo looks very interesting, and Plock and Opole seem to have good reviews on here as well as interesting species lists. I'd be very appreciative if anyone has any recommendations, not only of zoos but travel through Poland as well. Train may well be my best option, car hire is around £25 a day which including parking fees and fuel may well be significantly more expensive than using public transport.
Wroclaw, Warsaw and Opole are the best zoos in the country; Poznan is good too, and some of the other bigger places have strong elements, even if, overall, they do not match the quality of the bigger places. The only recent train journey I have undertaken in the country was from Wroclaw to Opole - pretty quick, very easy. Car would obviously be easier and would enable you to do more in a limited time. Poznan Zoo is a bit of a trek out of town - I'm sure do-able by public transport, but easier by car. Driving in the country is very easy, and, in my experience, the roads are a lot less crowded than in the UK or Germany. I don't know the countryside - @LaughingDove is your man for this - but the cities are wonderful. Wroclaw has real charm; Krakow is an obvious draw; Warsaw is, I think, one fo the most underrated cities in Europe. If you are interested in C20th history, Warsaw is particularly fascinating. Overall: a great country, with some wonderful people, and fantastic zoos.
Zoo-wise, Wroclaw, Poznan and Warsaw are worth visiting. Opole is a very good zoo, too, although drawback may be that it has few species or exhibits not found in British zoos. Lodz has a good zoo, but many exhibits are currently closed due to construction of the new giant Asian area. If you have a driving licence, definitely rent a car in Warsaw and visit Bialowieza forest (with pre-booked trip to the strict reserve) and Biebrza wetlands (Burzyn-Wizna-Goniadz area). Biebrza is likely to be even more attractive than the forest. March/April has normally huge flocks of migrating birds and huge floodlands, and you will see a wild Elk/Moose very probably to almost certainly. You might do both areas in two very full days, with budget overnighting in one of many B&Bs or hotels in the region. Although a week shared between both is much better. Poland can easily take a month or more. For other nature, moving sand dunes at Leba, river landscape of Wisla, and mountain forests at Bieszczady are also very good but cannot fit in one week itinerary. Then are many old towns and other attractions.
Thanks both, I really appreciate your thoughts. I've had a better look at flights and public transport routes, I think it'll be quite difficult to combine a good zoo trip with a good nature trip in the short time I'll have. Rough itinerary: Day 1 - early flight to Kraków, zoo in the afternoon Day 2 - travel to Ostrava, Ostrava zoo Day 3 - travel to Wroclaw Day 4 - Wroclaw zoo Day 5 - travel to Poznan Day 6 - Poznan zoo Say 7 - spare day? somewhere? Day 8 - travel to Warsaw Day 9 - Warsaw zoo Day 10 - return home after exploring Warsaw Which works quite nicely as a rough plan, plus a spare day. Will I need two days in Wroclaw? Moscow and Berlin Zoogarten took me 2 days, but I did Prague in a day at the expense of a couple of exhibits (which I've always kicked myself over!), Lodz looks like a rapidly growing zoo, so I think it will be best to give it a couple of years before visiting. Anyway, any comments or advice would be very much appreciated!
On the basis that Berlin took you 2 days, I'd say you'll need more than a day to see/enjoy Wroclaw properly. The reptile house can chew up between two and four hours depending on your level of interest in herps (I'd recommend doing it in two or more shifts to avoid fatigue), you really need to allow a fair amount of time to enjoy the majesty of the Afrikarium and, no doubt, you'll want/need repeat visits to some enclosures to be able to see the rarities. It's a great zoo and I'd hate to have to try to fit it into one day.
In Wroclaw, maybe somebody advises you when animals at the Monkey House are fed and when queues form at the entrance to Afrykarium. Otherwise, visit first time in the morning and head straight towards the old monkey house for the best chance to see bear cuscus, giant flying squirrel and echidna. Then straight towards Afrykarium, ignoring the exhibits along the way. Another tricky one in balabac chevrotain, but there is a more visible one in Warsaw, too. For the spare day, maybe second day in Wroclaw, or visit to Opole zoo, or sightseeing in Krakow, or maybe day visit salt mines Wieliczka from Krakow. Unique experience. Train from Poznan to Warsaw takes few hours only, so it takes less than a day. enjoy your trip!
Thanks @Shorts, I hoped someone would say that! Looks like I'll up it to a 2 day trip. Great advice @Jurek7, thanks very much. Is this the monkey house to the right of Afrykarium on the map? The map online is pretty unclear... I'm now trying to decide between Krakow zoo and Śląski Ogród Zoologiczny in Katowice, has anyone been to both? Krakow has some nice rarities, but I think I will pick them up elsewhere, and Katowice has some pretty cool fish species. Just wondering if it's worth the extra journey.
About Wrocław: bear cuscuses are behind the scenes now. To see flying squirrels is almost mission impossible (unless you visit zoo at midnight ). Likewise echidnas, but every wednesday at 1:00 pm is bath and weighing of echidnas. What to choose Kraków or Katowice? Better is Opole, one hour by train from Wrocław. Śląskie Zoo isn't located in Katowice, but in the neighboring city of Chorzów (good connection from Katowice railway station to zoo, 15 minutes by tramway). Kraków Zoo is located on the outskirts, in big forest (30 min by bus from city centre). Śląskie Zoo and Kraków zoo are comparable, but Kraków itself is much, much more interesting than Katowice and worth visiting (it's former polish capital).
I’d agree that Wroclaw is a two-day zoo. If you want to see the fish and the reptile collections properly, you’ll need to spend time there. And it’s a very nice zoo to potter about, with good places for lunch as well. The cafe in the Afrykarium is wholly decent, but much nicer is the restaurant in the old entrance building, next door to the semi-derelict old carnivore house. There’s a fairly standard cafe outside, but if you go into the building and up the stairs, you are in a lovely - and historically significant - restaurant. The staff downstairs are sometimes strangely reluctant to let you through, but they’ve always taken only a little persuasion. The pierogis are very good indeed! And there are many worse cities than Wroclaw in which to spend time. If this were my trip, I’d want to visit the zoos of Krakow and Chorzow (Katowice), but in truth neither is especially marvellous, and both could be missed at no great loss. Opole, though, is very much worth seeing.
If you have a spare day around Krakow a visit to Auschwitz is much more impressive than any zoo. Be sure to spend a full day there....
Thanks for your continued advice everyone, I really do appreciate it. Itinerary has changed slightly: Day 1 - early flight to Kraków, zoo in the afternoon Day 2 - travel to Ostrava, Ostrava zoo Day 3 - travel to Wroclaw, Katowice zoo on the way Day 4 - Wroclaw zoo Day 5 - Wroclaw zoo 2 Day 6 - Travel to Poznan Say 7 - Both Poznan zoos Day 8 - travel to Warsaw Day 9 - Warsaw zoo Day 10 - return home after exploring Warsaw I've asked both Ostrava and Katowice if they have a small locker for my suitcase, otherwise things are going to get very tricky! Thanks, that doesn't look hard to find! Thanks for the advice, Opole looked like a really nice zoo, but it didn't really have many species that really stood out for me compared to the other zoos. I imagine I will be back to Poland in the future, and Opole, Lodz and Plock will be on the list. The fish collection in particular is a huge draw, so I'm sure I'll spend a while hunting the obscure species out. Thanks for the advice on food as well, nothing better than enjoying a great lunch in good surroundings! Thanks, it's certainly somewhere I would love to visit one day. Unfortunately the main impetus behind visiting Poland on these dates in particular was to avoid the depressing reality of my country turning it's back on the rest of Europe. I don't think I'd be emotionally prepared to cope with Auschwitz on the same weekend!
I see that you are big fan of fish. So during your stay in Poznan, I recommend a visit to Palmiarnia (Palm House). It’s only 10-12 minutes on foot from Old Zoo. One hall in Palm House is Aquarium. There are many rather old-fashioned and overloaded tanks but they have much over 100 species so you can find something interesting for you.
Thanks Arek, that looks like a really interesting place. Even without the aquarium it looks pretty good, hopefully I can squeeze it in somewhere, a really good tropical house would be a great addition to the trip.
So that's day one done! Spent a very enjoyable 3 hours in Krakow zoo. I wasn't sure what to make of it initially: the elephant enclosure isn't great, and many of the aviaries and enclosures in the exotarium were empty, and those that housed residents weren't staggeringly exciting (other than the rosy boa). Likewise the primate section isn't brilliant: though revamped within the last few years done of the enclosures are simply too small for their inhabitants - 4 chimps in a small exhibit just isn't nice to see. However, other sections of the zoo really make up for this. The carnivore collection, though secretive by their nature, is great, as is the small but very well presented nocturnal house. Fans of erlebnis zoos need not apply, thanks to the liberal use of bars and mesh at a distance from the path. Still, even with the old school appearance, the zoo is a very enjoyable place to wander around and at times has the appearance of a park which happens to have some exhibits inside. Certainly the fact that the zoo actually puts signs on most of their trees really helps this and is very much welcome. Visiting zoos in Europe in early Spring before the weather warms and the buds burst isn't always the best time, but even so I was very happy with my time in Krakow zoo. They've kept their history on display, though some enclosures are in real need of development, and there is plenty to interest most Zoochatters. Highlights: a very showy pair of ground cuscus, the great range of small carnivores (even if some were no shows) on display, and the hoofstock. Tomorrow: Ostrava.
I've already managed to get myself behind, oh well. Ostrava stuck me as a zoo much more to my tastes than Krakow within about 10 minutes of being there. I try not to read up on site too much before I go there, just look quickly on here at reviews, then try to avoid looking before I go. As such all I really knew about Ostrava was that it went in deeply to geographical theming. But going in and seeing the map for the first time was a real indication that I was going to enjoy myself. The bonsai collection was great, and from there I made my way though the collection. Ostrava is a bit like Tierpark Berlin in that it is fundamentally a woodland which happens to have zoo animals in. As such there is a huge area of the zoo, possibly even 50%, which is largely left for wildlife. I love zoos which set aside space for nature, so this, as well as the copious amounts of interp for trees and native wildlife of all forms (including some great sculptures of wood-feeding beetles), is really in Ostrava's favour. Particular kudos to the giant native herp trail. Despite the generally high quality of the enclosures, the large cat pavilion really stands out as being completely sub par, and really should be drastically improved. In contrast to the enclosures given to the small cats they are small, cramped, bland and with almost no off show areas. Tearing it down and starting again would be the best option. Another annoyance was the top view only pools for the fish in the evolution and Amazon pavilions. They have some really nice fish species in there, but due to heavy reflections from the glass roof they are very difficult to see properly and most visitors just glossed over them. The Safari wasn't running due to it still being on winter hours which was a shame, though I'm not sure how much I really missed. There are some really great parts to the zoo. The Tanganyika pavilion is really lovely, especially the nocturnal section, as is Papua and the small carnivore and bird of prey sections. Overall Ostrava now ranks as one of my favourite large (i.e. one day) zoos, behind Leipzig and Chester. It wouldn't take much for it to push past Chester for me, so keeping an eye on the future of this zoo should prove very interesting.
I'm bumping an old thread that hasn't been updated in a full year, as I'm curious to read some more zoo reviews! I enjoyed the comments from @Dormitator , but there are only two zoo reviews: Krakow and Ostrava. Did you finish your trip? Do you have time these days to type up some reviews?
I write this a year on from my trip, having been rightly shamed into writing some more on it! Thanks for the nudge @snowleopard ! My intention was to write the reviews as I went along in the evenings, but for various reasons this slipped by pretty quickly (the main one being that I hate typing on phone keyboards). Anyway... Day 3 I spent most of the day hanging around in Ostrava, an amazingly quiet city considering its size. The bus times had conspired against me, and I just couldn’t get a bus in decent time to do something natural history-orientated in Wroclaw. I wandered around a few markets at my leisure, eventually heading to a mall after doing some birdwatching in a park. I have a bit of a thing for going to foreign malls - no matter which country I have visited them in, they all somehow manage to end up looking virtually identical. I Have no interest in shopping, but looking at the tiny, unique differences between them in different countries always really interests me. I eventually wandered back to my hotel, before walking to the bus stop to pick up another Flixbus to Wroclaw to my only AirBnB on the trip. Due to my reliance on taxis, Uber and buses for my travel, I resigned myself to staying in cheap hotels most of the time, which at least gave me the flexibility to grab a good breakfast so I didn’t have to think about lunch, as well as somewhere to store my luggage securely and not have to worry about arranging to meet someone. In Wroclaw however, I was going to be staying for three nights which more than justified using an AirBnB. Days 4 & 5 I set off bright and early to the zoo. My flat was right in the centre of the city, but was only a 20 minute walk and tram ride so getting there for opening wasn’t a hardship. Big targets for this zoo were the reptile house, aquarium, and Afrikarium, as well as the rarities around and about. On both days I went straight to the monkey house to attempt to see the red giant squirrel as well as the black giant squirrel on the way just outside the rhinos. Despite repeated visits on both days, I drew a complete blank, but that’s hardly a huge surprise. Wroclaw isn’t a colossal zoo in terms of footprint, but this initial walk over and around from the entrance did at least show me that there were interesting species throughout the zoo - the crazy species list certainly wasn’t confined to the herps or fish. After a short wander I went off to the Afrikarium, which is, in short, incredible. Easily in my top three zoo buildings with Gondwanaland in Leipzig and World of Birds in the Bronx. What makes it so brilliant is the range of critters housed within. As an obscure freshwater fish geek, this was hevan for me with plenty of big tanks full of fish to gaze at. Charismatic megafauna are naturally prescent as crowd pleasers, but it is a shame that the hippos pulled the short straw with no outdoor access. The enclosure is however a good size, with plenty of deep water, but more land area for their nocturnal roaming would really have helped. The fur seals however are treated to a superb pool which may be one of the best pinniped enclosures I’ve seen, whilst the manatees also come off extremely well. The birds in the free flight areas also come off well, being able to wander around the open-topped enclosures for other species at their leisure. I spent many hours here over my two days, and still didn’t manage to spot everything. Other highlights of this superb zoo were the Aquarium with a great selection of freshwater species from around the world (though reflections and badly angled glass were major frustrations), the Odrarium with the wonderful combo of native fish and ducks, and of course the reptile house. Compared to the other great herp collections I’ve visited in Europe (Berlin, Moscow & Cologne), it excited me far more than Berlin’s did, which felt a bit sterile, was a big step up in enclosure size and enrichment from Moscow, but failed to reach Cologne’s sheer quality at every level. But Wroclaw had an elephant trunk snake, which was amazing. It also had some great mini-exhibits dotted around, including a superb one which detailed the zoo’s work with the Capricorn beetle (Cerambyx cerdo) and even showed off a larva in a rearing petri dish. Some of Wroclaw had a bit of an odds and sods feel to it, some of the enclosures stuck out a bit as being someone disconnected to the rest of the zoo - the huge brown bear woodland didn’t quite fit to my eyes, almost like someone had grabbed a bit of Ostrava and moved it into Poland. @sooty mangabey's suggestion of the restaurant was superb, thanks so much! I loved Wroclaw. I think it has a great future in the zoo world, and really think it is up there with the best in Europe’s mega zoos. Top 3 for me? No. Top 5? Possibly… Day 6 This was going to be a blitz day, travelling to Poznan, then straight to Poznan’s new zoo. Relying on cheap, mid-day Uber trips helped me here, getting me to my hotel, then straight to the zoo (which is a bit of a drive out) without me speaking the language. I was unprepared for the sheer scale of Poznan Nowe. After two days of plodding around Wroclaw, Poznan’s hills and distance were a bit of an endurance test. However, the zoo was well worth the trecking, even if I didn't have enough time to do a full double looped visit. Though rather more mammal focused than I normally like, Poznan has such a variety of mammals housed in generally excellent, spacious enclosures it's very hard not to be impressed. Like Ostrava, Poznan is largely a managed woodland which happens to have animal enclosures in. I imagine in May or Autumn this is one of the prettiest zoos around, particularly in the center around the lake. Other groups certainly aren't forgotten however, birds of prey are well represented, and a clever outdoor building with invertebrate enclosures exposed to the low sun late in the afternoon was very nice indeed: not often you see sun beetles fighting over themselves to get to the sun's warming rays. Visiting collections in northern Europe in early spring usually doesn't show zoos at their best: sensitive species may be behind the scenes, others may still be hibernating, the weather can be highly variable, off-season work may still be continuing, and animals sometimes just don't want to go outside. As such, despite the cold, but sunny weather on my visit, Poznan didn't show itself at it's best - there were a large number of no shows and some sections were closed for maintenance. However, most of the species I was really keen to see (Siberian weasel, wood bison, takin) were happy out and about in the cold, so I can't complain about missing the peasants. Plus the zoo was dead, which is always a bonus. One additional section which needs mentioning was the excellent nocturnal house. This was probably one of the nicest nocturnal houses I've been to, not only with a great selection of species, including vampire bats, but also with excellent enclosures which avoided one of the issues such houses often have. After seeing owls in Moscow's nocturnal house, and thinking that although cool, space limitations and having them so close to a noisy public wasn't really going to work, seeing the scops owl (Indian? I can't remember) in Poznan with a large enclosure, as big as many outdoor aviaries it would get elsewhere, and a calm, spacious public area really sold the idea to me. Overall, Poznan worked really well as a specialised collection. It isn't trying to be a species tickfest like Wroclaw, but it's trying to present a diverse selection of mammals, balanced by some additional taxa, in substantial enclosures. It's certainly not perfect, the harbor seal doesn't come off well, and some of the paddocks are a bit bland and lack enrichment, but overall this is a lovely zoo. I preferred Ostrava, but not by as much as I was expecting... Ps. apologies for any spelling errors in this, trying a new method of writing long posts on the phone which hasn't worked perfectly, but at least it's writing.
