Among Friends

 

Even though it was an individual work, visiting the Bear Sanctuary with my friends was an unforgettable experience. 

The Bear Sanctuary is located in Prishtine more specifically in Mramor, near Badovc Lake. It was my first time visiting the bear sanctuary, and we were lucky to have one of our friends be a local which made her our tour guide for this trip.

         

At the entrance, you can see the reception where we were greeted by the staff. The entrance fees for adults are 2.50 cent for children 4-14 years, and people above 65 years its 1.50 cent. The reception was painted with colors of green and brown, it was surrounded with beautiful paintings some even by our talented colleague and guide in our case, Shkurte Gashi. It also contained bean bags, plants and also a gift shop, with beautiful gifts such as mugs, hoodies, bags, key chains, and many more things related to the bears shown in the sanctuary.

                            

Once you pass the reception and go outside the real fun begins, immediately after a few steps you began to see the living conditions of these bears, every bear was separated with wire, they each had their own place to sleep, eat, run around and even their private pools to take long baths. Each bear had a name and at every stop you had information about the bear, this information contained their name, age, place where they were rescued from. Since, well they can’t tell us that themselves. The sanctuary is a safe home to over 20 rescued bears. Since we went at a time when bears are mostly hibernating, we were lucky enough to see around 6 bears. They were all friendly and quite a beautiful sight, to just see these beautiful creatures enjoying their peace. But the bears were not all we saw, as we were admiring one of the bears, we heard a loud roar which then we were quickly informed by our friend that the roar came from the lion, which by the sound we had already figured. 

Now us being 4 excited adults sprinted to see the lion. Once we arrived, we all just stopped talking and even stopped moving to admire this exotic creature, we couldn’t admire for long as it was time for the lion to be fed.

                                        

For which our friend informed us the many times a day they get fed, and how they get every nutrition they need. And by those roars we could hear the lion was pleased. Seeing that lion made me personally feel and understand that a creature such as that lion, no matter where it may be, caged or not, it will always represent the wilderness and the beauty of a side of the world that we do not quite understand.

Also, something me and my friends found so exciting was seeing how some of the bears were the same age as us. The bears and the lion seemed to be living in amazing circumstances, seeing and hearing about the stories on how they were rescued, and the conditions they were living before, I am glad this sanctuary made it possible for these bears to be rescued, and live in much better conditions. I would highly recommend visiting it, for an unforgettable experience, the bear sanctuary has a welcoming staff and even welcoming bears. I will definitely visit it again,and I hope to see some of you there.

                                                                                  Written by: Olsa Tahiraj