The pandas of Schonbrunn

Not long after the pandas arrived at Edinburgh Zoo, Ros went to see them with her sister. It's a long way to Edinburgh from mid-Suffolk, but Ros was really keen, having never seen a panda up close before. Sadly, her effort was in vain, as one of the pandas was off display through ill health, and the other was on a high platform, meaning that you could only see its shoulder and one ear.

Yang Yang, a very unusual panda indeed

I had, in doing my pre-trip research, realised that the zoo at Schonbrunn, in Vienna's western suburbs, apart from being the oldest zoo in the world (opened as an imperial menagerie in 1752), has pandas, and so I decided that Ros should get another opportunity to see her panda. And so, with the business part of our trip over, we set off under grey skies to see them.

Tiergarten Schönbrunn, to give it its proper name, is a surprisingly nice zoo given the limitations of space, with decent sized enclosures and seemingly happy animals. And, it feels Viennese in terms of its architecture and layout. But our priority was, of course, pandas, and we headed straight to them.

Mother and son

The pandas have been there now for more than a decade, so perhaps the excitement that Edinburgh has experienced has worn off a little, but for those starved of pandas, we were quite excited. And we weren't disappointed...

Young Fu Bao has mastered climbing already

For the zoo is only one of four zoos in Europe that have pandas, Long Hui, who is male, and Yang Yang, the female, and the only one of the four which has successfully bred naturally. Indeed, they've produced three cubs, Fu Long and Fu Hu, who now live in China. Apparently, the deal is that if cubs are produced, China gets them after two years.

Best of all, on 14 August last year, young Fu Bao was born, which meant that he was still there!

Ros was, naturally, delighted, although she now wants to see them in China, something that I can't really object to. Now, all I need to do is work out when, and how, we might get to Chengdu...