I didn't have a local zoo as a kid and I had only visited some zoos while doing tourism in other cities. Then I moved to Finland and Helsinki Zoo has become my local zoo. It's actually called Korkeasaari, which means high island.
It is a modest zoo which focuses mostly on animals that can cope with the cold, so there are very little African or tropical animals. What I like the most is that the zoo is an island and is very natural. You can get there walking over a pedestrian bridge or by boat, so no cars on the island. Most of the habitats are big and they basically just put a fence around the natural landscape of the island. There are no big buildings or supermodern facilities.
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They have a nice range of cats: snow leopards, Siberian tigers, Asiatic lions, Amur leopards, Eurasian lynx and wild cats, and they are usually active, because they don't have to hide from the heat. I had never seen a snow leopard moving in other zoos, and here they are one of my favourite animals.
There are also many European animals which are on the spotlight, including Alpine marmots, reindeer, lynx, bearded vultures, pine marten, Eurasian otter, European bison, musk ox, wolverine, and wild boars. The moose died and have unfortunately been replaced by takins. However, the big stars of the zoo are the Eurasian brown bears, which are my favourite animals in the park. In all my visits, they are the only animals that are always active doing things. There's a restaurant in which you can eat watching the bears through a glass.
The only bad thing is that the zoo is not very big and I miss some more species. I understand that they don't have polar bears because there's no much space available for them, but I wish they had penguins, artic foxes (they have the fennec), seals, beavers and wolves, for example.