Das Fledermaushaus

Today I accompanied the boys’ class to Noctalis, which is the bat house in Bad Segeberg, a 45 minute bus ride from here.  It was a fun trip and I am glad that I went along as I know a lot more about bats today than I did yesterday! Here are some photos of a German class trip…I must say it is a lot easier to keep track of a bunch of NZ kids, simply because they have school uniforms on and when one goes astray, it can easily be spotted by the uniform colours.  Not that anyone did go astray, we were a very civilised group in deed.  Another mother was on the trip and she had a magic backpack in which she had little elves hidden that were cooking and cutting while we were talking.  She pulled out cute little meat balls (Frikadellen) which were super tasty, then gorgeously sweet tasting cherry tomatoes, then sliced capsicums, then delicious salami sticks, next came Frankfurter sausages, then some mini Hanuta (yummy hazelnut wafers that were favourites of mine when I was a child) and for deserta chocolate chip cake cut into small pieces.  I am telling you it was like magic in that back pack and I am sure had we stayed any longer her little elves would have cooked something else.  Thank you Jasmin.

Two classes, 3c and 3a, were on this trip together. Here they are having their breakfast break around 10:00am.

Ben is the slightly pale looking boy in the red and white striped jacket in the middle of the bottom row (I caught him reading at 22:00 last night…Harry Potter has a lot to answer for!) and Nick is in blue with blue beanie in the middle, above Ben in the top row.

Nick at the later lunch break in the same spot eating a German roll for lunch.

And here is Ben at lunch, sorry couldn’t turn those two photos around…

Here is what the building looks like on the outside,

Noctalis, das Fledermaushaus (such a cute word).

I have learnt that there are up to twenty varieties of bats in Germany, that bats have habitats all over the world, except for Antarctica and theArctic, they hibernate for up to four months in winter in their winter quarters and in order to do so they have to eat a lot of food in summer, up to three thousand (3000!) mosquitoes a night! They store their fat on their back, between their wings and it needs to keep them alive for those four months.  Their heart beat during hibernation slows down to three beats per minute and theydrop their   body temperature to use as little energy as possible.  If they wake up too early, say January, and spring hasn’t sprung yet, they won’t find any insects to eat and die.  Females get together to raise their young and a bat gives birth hanging up side down and it catches its young in its tail wing.  That’s pretty agile, don’t you think?  If their young ever falls of the wall, bat mums don’t go and pick them up, they just die.  I guess they can’t really pick them up…nothing to pick them up with.  Ben got particularly friendly with one of the bats….

This bat ended up coming home with us. At present its name is ‘creeper’ but that seems to be a work in progress.

The area where Noctalis is located is very pretty in autumn, which as you might know is by far my favourite season and look at what I could feast my eyes on..

A German village along a river during autumn…sigh

more sighs…

Creeper also had a friend at the Fledermauhaus, Hedwig, who wanted to go home with Nick and then we found a little friend for Tessa, too who is yet to be named and who might spend  the rest of its day on our notice board as it is a clever little bat with magnets in its wings.

The clever magnetic bat.

Hedwig the owl.

It was a fun day with lots of learning and all of us are quite tired, yet again!  We had gebratene Maultaschen again for dinner…hm yummy we really like that!! Tessa is lying on her bed, giggling Harry Potter is doing something rather funny.  It’s very economical getting those books, because all of them are reading them, although at a frightening speed.  Oh well, once they are done, I could re-read them

Good Night from all of us
Tanja xxx