Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Basel Zoo

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

A few weeks ago we went to the zoo as part of Roche's annual ex-pat outing.  Several hundred people turned out for the event (a lot of families).  The zoo was closed, so we had the place to ourselves, which was pretty cool.  We started with a “happy-hour” and then divvied up and went on 1-hour guided tours of the zoo (we chose the Etosha house tour, with cheetahs, gamgoas, porcupines, meerkats and African birds).




After the tour, we had a nice dinner and met some fun people who also work for Roche and are temporarily here from SFO/Genentech.  We were part of the last stragglers to leave and the main stairs in front of the restaurant were blocked off, but we just went around to the side staircase and headed back to the main entrance where we came in…..it was extremely dark except for the light from the moon and nearby streets, and we were alone, so we thought, this can’t be right -- they can’t allow random people to wander around the zoo at odd hours?!  We made it to the front entrance and sure enough, it was locked.  Huh, that's not good.  We made our way back to the restaurant and noticed a big “Exit” sign pointing in the exact opposite direction of the way we went.  Not sure how we missed that!  We were cracking up.  I can’t believe no one stopped us when they saw us going the wrong way though.  Yep, so we spent a good 20 minutes completely wandering around the zoo in darkness, but eventually made it home safe and sound.  Silly us.

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