Nuremberg Zoo/Tiergarten Nürnberg

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It’s just been announced that the polar bear cub Flocke will be on public view from April 9. Here is a guide for visitors – after all, the school Easter holidays end next Friday, so from March 31 there will be a few days to visit the Zoo while it’s still civilized.

I can’t get the hang of Google Maps, but if you scroll to the right here you will eventually see the zoo, marked with a blue line.


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It is embedded in deep forest, on a hilly and wooded site, and you can see the sandstone where the stone for Nuremberg Castle was quarried. So it’s quite a large and civilized zoo for the visitor – less so for some of the animals. A bit like a mixture between a more generously planned zoo and a crowded inner-city zoo. It would still be in Dutzendteich if Hitler hadn’t wanted that area for a parade ground. And look what happened to that.

Parking is difficult except on the civilized days I just mentioned. So do yourself a favour and get the tram from the main railway station. At the moment, it normally runs every ten minutes and takes fifteen minutes to get there, and you get out closer to the zoo than if you had to park some distance away.

See more in the continuation.

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BILD on law/BILD-BGB

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BILDblog corrects some legal advice given in BILD Zeitung, quoted as follows:

Laut Artikel 195 des Bundesgesetzbuches (BGB) können Sie Fehler von Handwerkern bis zu drei Jahre nach der Dienstleistung geltend machen.

Apart from the fact that the usual period for a Werkvertrag (loosely translated as contract for work and services) is two years, the misquotation of a Paragraf (section) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch reminds me of a howler contained in a book of standard English translations of German legal texts that is sold by a translator in Germany, where at least at one time EGBGB (Einführungsgesetz zum BGB – Introductory Act to the Civil Code) was rendered as European Civil Code (we’re still waiting for that).

(Via der winkelschreiber)

British blood refused/Britische Blutspende abgelehnt

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John Flood, temporarily at Miami Law School, tries to give blood:

I hand in the forms and a moment later the medic looks glum. Was it because I’d admitted to taking an aspirin that morning? No.

“I have to reject you,” he said. “You’ve been in the UK.”

“So? I come from there.”

“It’s because of ‘mad cow disease’. We can’t risk you.”

LATER NOTE: the Wikipedia entry on Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease has more details of the dangers, and information on bans on blood donors in other countries – Australia, Singapore, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland. In the UK, blood donors may not include those who have had a blood transfusion since 1980:

In 2004 a new report published in the Lancet medical journal showed that vCJD can be transmitted by blood transfusions.[19] The finding alarmed healthcare officials because a large epidemic of the disease might arise in the near future. There is no test to determine if a blood donor is infected and in the latent phase of vCJD. In reaction to this report, the British government banned anyone who had received a blood transfusion since January 1980 from donating blood.