You don’t just have to go to Berlin for a formula, they have a fantastic zoo that will captivate the whole family

Do you also sometimes wonder where to go on a free weekend trip, either as a couple or with children? There are thousands of options, but one interesting one is about a 4-hour drive from Prague, it is called Zoo Berlin and is open daily from 9:00 a.m. and depending on the season until 4:30 p.m. (winter), 6:00 p.m. (autumn, early spring) or until 6:30 p.m.

It is the oldest and most visited zoo in Germany, which is also proud of the worldwide first place in the representation of animal species, the breeding of the rare giant panda and an important European aquarium. Moreover, it is not an uncomfortably sprawling zoo with long transitions, so even those who don’t like to walk can handle the visit.

In any case, you can get to Berlin comfortably by highway, with the fastest way being via Prague to the north and around Dresden. As a rest point, we recommend the nearby town of Thiendorf, where there is a pump, a supermarket, two fast food restaurants and an electric car charger.

If you will not be equipped with fuel from the Czech Republic, the prices of which already exceed 40 CZK per liter, then you can fill up at German highway pumps for approximately 44 CZK per liter of basic diesel, i.e. for 48 CZK per liter of basic gasoline E10. If you drive on LPG, then 1 dm here3 it costs around 27 CZK. The prices are not favorable mainly because the exchange rate of the koruna against the euro is poor, when our currency is simply weak.

You still don’t need a toll stamp on German autobahns, and there are still sections with unlimited speed, but with a recommended 130 km/h. However, you should have one important thing on your trip to Berlin Zoo, namely the emission plaque.

The zoo is located in a low-emission “Umwelt” zone, so we recommend equipping your car with this round sticker. You can get it at Dekra stations, it costs about 300 to 500 CZK, and to get it you have to bring with you either a small technician’s license (ORV) and a copy (!) of a large technician’s license, i.e. a new type of extended registration certificate.

Attention, the color of the plaque varies according to the Euro standard and the fuel, while you can get into most low-emission zones with only a green plaque with the number 4, i.e. diesels meeting at least EURO 4 and petrols at least EURO 1. If you would like to risk it without a plaque (they must also have electric cars), so a fine of around 2,000 CZK is involved.

When you arrive at the zoo, another surprise might await you, namely the absence of a parking lot. This garden does not have its own parking lot, and on its website it recommends arriving by public transport, which, as die-hard motorists, gives us a rather unpleasant feeling.

Fortunately, there are several parking garages (parkhaus) in the immediate vicinity of the south entrance to the zoo, so you just have to choose according to the price, because they differ by almost 100%. We chose a parking lot connected to a shopping center called BIKINI Berlin, where we parked for 20 euros (500 CZK) for the whole day.

From the parking lot, it was pleasantly close to the entrance gate, so we were greeted by a queue at the ticket office, which we avoided thanks to the more convenient purchase of tickets online. All it took was a few beeps of the QR code and the attendant let us in and gave us a map.

Speaking of the tickets, their price varies depending on when you go to the place, but most of you are interested in the weekend, when adults (from 16 years old) pay about five hundred for entrance to the zoo and about eight hundred for a combined ticket and to the aquarium. Children from four to sixteen years old will have it for less than three hundreds for the zoo and for almost four hundred with the aquarium. Attention, these are online prices, tickets are easily a third more expensive on the spot.

The southern entrance, which we also went through, has the advantage of immediately leading you to the biggest local attraction, which is the pandas. By the way, these cute but rather lazy bears have a stylish pavilion here, where you can not only see them, but also read some interesting facts about them. For example, the fact that a female panda has a chance to get pregnant only during a period of 72 hours per year, namely in the spring. Or the fact that adults consume several kilos of bamboo per day.

From the black and white teddy bears, you are offered to take it to the primate pavilion, where you can find various macaques, gibbons, kotulas, chimpanzees and other types of primates, including small and funny ones. Monkeys are the most abundant here, with some putting on a literal acrobatic show and hanging by their tails, while others just sit lazily and do nothing, such as orangutans.

Indian elephants can be considered such zoo classics, whose indoor and outdoor enclosures are relatively spacious in Berlin. By the way, the oldest elephant from the farm was born in the 70s, so who knows, maybe he will be your age.

A little further away from the creatures with a great memory live the elegant giraffes, who like to enjoy the contents of the high-hanging feeders, while the rhinos living nearby enjoy a beautiful and clean enclosure full of greenery. There are also hippos, who love to swim and easily hide their entire massive body under water. By the way, although a hippopotamus may seem cute and harmless, an adult individual can easily kill a person in a few seconds.

If you are more into birds, then you will be interested in their pavilion, where you can find these flying birds from Australia, Africa, but also Asia. A small sparrow will certainly get into their aviary, but that is de facto an illegal migrant from outside. However, if you like parrots, finches, pigeons, starlings, parakeets, hornbills and other various flyers, then this is the one for you.

If you don’t have enough birds, it’s worth taking a look at the pheasant pen next to which the wolves have an enclosure. If you hit the feeding time, you can see a wolf literally shred a full-grown (already killed) feeder chicken in a matter of seconds.

Everyone likes penguins, although they don’t have much space here, but due to their activity of standing and doing nothing, it’s probably an adequate place to live. If you have your offspring with you, then it’s worth the time to sit by the water tank with the sea lions, who are as playful as an Abarth 500. In short, a joy to look at.

And when you’ve had your fill of aquatic mammals and passed the horses in pajamas (zebras), you’ll find enclosures for kangaroos, kudu, ostriches, emus and llamas behind the bridge leading over the water channel. However, during our visit these animals were not very active and rather lazing around.

Cats, watch out! For you, there is like a created pavilion named Empire of Cats, where felines live. However, don’t expect cat bits from them, felines like to rest. You can usually find these various “mikeshes” sprawled out, lying down, sleeping somewhere.

Anyway, on the spot you will see a lion, a tiger, a jaguar (the animal, not the car), a leopard, a desert cat, a galidia or perhaps an ocelot, which is a de facto leopard washed at 90 degrees Celsius.

Under the Feline Empire, nocturnal creatures still live in dark spaces, i.e. bats, monkeys, mice, but also desert foxes (bitches).

Although it belongs to the zoo, it has a separate entrance. It is an aquarium, one of the most important in Europe, which inside will offer a spectacle of all kinds of fish of different sizes, fish including sharks, seahorses, stingrays, starfish, corals, turtles, as well as miraculous jellyfish. Frogs, turtles, snakes, crocodiles and other reptiles have their place on the floor of the aquarium. In short, you won’t see all this, which the Berlin Zoo has in breeding, anywhere in the Czech Republic, that’s why it’s worth going here.

And what about our motorized sidekick? We drove a SsangYong Tivoli, which is actually the basic model of this South Korean brand, whose front design is rather unusual, especially due to the full mask and tricolor, so you won’t confuse it with anything. The more eye-catching the bow, the more ordinary the stern.

In any case, this compact SUV looks comfortable, so you probably won’t be surprised that its interior is not to be thrown away either. The passenger compartment is solid, the design and execution classic SsangYong, again with a flood of black glossy piano plastics, the settled dust on which shines like the stars in the sky. On the other hand, the manufacturer kept a lot of physical controllers here, which we consider a big plus.

Furthermore, there is a basic info system that doesn’t do anything, so you can use the screen for Apple CarPlay / Android Auto, thus your multimedia is solved. You then make most of the settings traditionally in alarm clocks, in our specification fully digital ones with variable graphics. It’s just a shame that you can’t play the image (navigation) from Car Play into the instrument panel, which the bigger Korando can do.

The Tivoli’s engine is a traditional 163-horsepower turbocharged 15-liter gasoline engine that has 280 Nm of torque with the six-speed manual, while 20 Nm less with the tested Aisin six-speed automatic.

These aren’t dazzling numbers, but the car is the lightest of the family, weighing in at just over 1.2 tons without the driver, so it’s surprisingly nimble compared to, say, the Korando or Torres. You will be pleasantly surprised how nimble the model is in the city even at higher speeds.

The built-in power unit, i.e. the four-cylinder engine with an Aisin automatic transmission, belongs to the “old school” today, which is redeemed by higher consumption on highways.

On the other hand, you can easily forgive this Tivoli, because it can be described as a normal car for normal people, which costs from a great 439,000 CZK (automatic + 35,900 CZK), will offer solid space, pleasant design, easy driving, surprising dynamics, and if you need, so for 39,900 CZK in addition 4 × 4 drive, which is less abundant in the SUV-B segment.