The photos below are taken in Berlin Tierpark. "Tierpark" means "animal park" in German and often Berlin Tierpark is mistakenly called "Berlin Zoo," however Berlin has two zoos and "Berlin Zoo" refers to the park built in West Berlin. The animal park in East Berlin was established in 1955 to counter the zoo in West Berlin.^ref The estate that the animal park is centered around was inhabited by nobels until 1945 when the Red Army occupied East Berlin and the nobles were evicted.^ref The animal park has since then become the largest in Europe.

It was a cold December morning when the photographer entered the zoo. Fog hung over Berlin on that day. Besides the photographer's friend, there was nobody but a man walking his dog at the zoo in the morning. As they walked in they looked up on the blue tits that were playing on the Christmas tree ornaments.

The photographer walked over to the bird section first. The birds differed vastly in their personality. Some birds screamed in fear as they saw the photographer, and some other birds came up to the camera as if they were trying to make friends. Well, truth to be told was that probably half of the birds tried to run away and hide which made it difficult to photograph them. Besides the bird cages there was also a squirrel on top and some of Berlin's wild birds in the trees.

Next up are the polar bears. As usual, polar bears in parks are popular, however, since the day was cold the audience was small. Tierpark has two polar bears, the mother "Tonja" and her daughter "Hertha." The park faced controversy when Hertha was born as her parents are siblings.^ref Of course the caretaker didn't mention any of that while he fed the bears with apples and carrots.

Afterwards the photographer and his friend decided to head for the park building to warm themselves up. On the way they went past the enclosure for a bunch of other animals. Owls, seagulls, donkeys, monkeys. Terrifying enough, one of the monkeys had caught a wild pigeon which it was eating in its enclosure.

Inside the atmosphere changed. Suddenly there were plenty of visitors and their voices echoed through the hallway. The camera lens had fogged up (this is a common issue when photographing in cold weather) so the photographer took a break. The building is the "Rainforest House" and along the wall it hosts different lizards and snakes. The middle of the house consists of a groove which visitors can go inside and within they can find crocodiles and birds. Lastly, at the end of the corridor is a tiger and her cups which at this time were in the middle of a nap.

Outside of the rainforest house, vultures were hugging themselves to the cliff walls to try to keep themselves away from the cold. At that point the tigers had woken up from their nap and could be found outside playing. East of the building, one of the caretakers prepared food and when he walked into the enclosure the penguins all gathered around him. He fed the penguins and told stories about them. Wild seagulls and herons also came to the enclosure to snatch some fish when the opportunity struck them.

In the giraffe enclosure there was only a lonely rabbit which was eating from the hay. The sun was slowly setting and the giraffes had gone into their stable for the evening. Inside there were also young giraffes and they were scratching themselves against the fence. The naked mole rat exhibition was also located in the stable.

As the dark fell the fog didn't clear up and the animals slowly faded away with the dim mist. As the photographer took a few last photos of sleeping animals a guard came over and asked to leave the park. Night fell upon the animal park, beams of light started to sway in the dark and visitors who had come for the Christmas event on this day poured in. The photographer and his friend went up the stream and exited the park.