We finally got to see one of Germany’s two Eisbär babies.  We missed Wilbär at the Stuttgart Zoo on Saturday.  Today we saw Flocke at the Tiergarten Nürnberg.  To show how crazy we are, we drove 120 miles each way to see a polar bear baby for about ten minutes.  But it was fun and it’s nice to have the time and the carefree-edness to be able to do it.  It was a great day weather-wise too.  Over 70 degrees (F) and sunny all the way and back, until a little rain when we got back to Frankfurt.

Flocke is quite cute.  BTW, Flocke is a girl.  (Wilbär is a boy, if the name didn’t give it away.)  She was sunning herself apart from her Mom when we got there.  Mom was in a separate part of the polar bear enclosure, mostly hamming it up for the spectators.  At one point Flocke jumped up and ran away from the crowd.  We thought she was leaving but she had seen her keeper coming and ran up to her looking for treats.  She knew the keeper had something and she was poking around her pockets and standing up trying to see what the keeper had in her hands.  Shortly after that they walked away and that was it for Flocke watching.

Flocke apparently keeps a tight schedule of showing herself from 9am to 10:30am, 1pm to 2:30pm and 3:30pm to 5pm.  I guess in between she answers fan mail and signs autographs.  We thought we were going to miss her.  We left Frankfurt just after 11am and should have reached the zoo by 1pm,  but road work delayed us by an hour.  We did have about ten minutes or so of viewing.

They have grandstand for watching Flocke and the place was packed.   You’d think these people had never seen a polar bear baby!  Oh wait, neither had we.