Kidding With Kids

A kid will love to hunt elephants in an asphalt jungle or even to fly the sky in the Jumping Castle, or splash into sparkling waters from the Dragon Slide. Let the wind carry one’s hair while one rides a pony: Vienna, the romantic imperial city of the Habsburgs, metropolis of art and culture, is also a city for kids. Small Magic Mice and big French Fries Tigers will find much enjoyment here.

Vienna boasts huge green areas where children can play to their hearts content. But that is by no means all. Maybe a little princess would like to dance a minuet in a hooped skirt and old-fashioned bodice? Or a super-detective would like to find some unicellular organism with a special microscope, travel across the starry sky or re-invent electricity? Become a child artist? Discover seeing, hearing, smelling or tasting in a completely new way? Kids will have all this and much more.

The Danube Island promises “cool” action for hot days. At this Viennese open-air paradise with its 42-kilometer-long beach, one can perform almost every outdoor sports activity like swimming, inline-skating, skate-boarding, street soccer, beach volleyball, basketball, football, trampolines, boating and biking or water-ski lift adventures at a weir.

The Schönbrunn Zoo who celebrated 2002 the 250th birthday is going to be a sure winner. Its director, Helmut Pechlaner, has turned the oldest zoo in the world into a first-rate attraction. Bears and tigers, monkeys and seals live in spacious, nature-like enclosures, like having an audience and provide marvelous performances for little visitors. In the new Elephant Park, one can experience these good-natured giants up really close: one is separated from them only by swinging ropes. Everybody’s darling of course is the young Abu, the first in-born elephant since a hundred years and his younger sister Mongu. A highlight of the zoo is the Aquarium and Terrarium House, with the largest coral reef in Austria and a separate area where special iguanas are bred; a glass tunnel takes visitors through the “waters of the Amazon”, one can even find a Crocodile Pavilion and African flora; and there is also an area where one can experience a “Night in the Tropical Forest.” A new attraction is the Rainforest-House where one feels like Tarzan in the jungle: An adventure for eyes, nose and ears. And the most recent guests are two new Coala- and two Panda bears, not only very rare specimens but also very cute ones.

Dinosaur skeletons, fascinating minerals, interesting animals and rare plants all of this and more can be found at the Museum of Natural History, especially during the special guided tours for children.

More than 200 attractions, each offering adventures, await the children in the amusement park Wurstelprater in Vienna’s Prater. It has the Jungle Train with the chirping of tropical birds; the House of Mirrors, where Mom looks like a toothpick and Dad like a barrel; pony rides and mini roller coasters, where the little ones scream with delight. There is also the dark and forbidding world of the dinosaurs; the World of Fairy-tales and the Jumping Castle, where one seems to fly straight towards heaven with one’s hair blowing in the wind and a new attraction for conquering the sky, a balloon with a fabulous view all over the city. Not only the kids but you will also love it.

By: Anil Gupta