Emmen Things to Do

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The zoo (dierenpark) is situated in the middle of the city of Emmen. You will find various animals up here: elephants, giraffes, monkeys, butterflies, hippos, penguins, rhinos, snakes, sharks, buffalos and tiger/lions.

Opening hours are (in 2010):

1 March till 31 May 10.00am till 5pm
1 June till 31 August 10.00am till 6pm
1 September till 30 September 10.00am till 5.30pm
1 October till 31 October 10.00am till 5pm
1 November till 28 February 10.am till 4.30pm

Email:info@dierenpark-emmen.nl

In the green heart of the city centre is the Centre of Visual Arts (Centrum Beeldende Kunst). In two exhibition halls are every year several exhibitions of contemporary art.

In summer 2004 there was the exhibition ''aLiVe'' of the photogroup Vlinderstad, celebrating their 55 years existence.

Opening hours:
9.00 am till 4.30 pm,
saterday and sunday from 2.00 till 4.00 pm.

The centre is closed and will move to another place soon. Keep informed by the website.

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The story of the 'Schimmeres' goes like this:

Unique for the Netherlands is this "Hunebed" with a special shape. Original one hill covered the 2 gravechambers. The circle of stones around the foot of the hill are still present.

The hill was 40 meter long. Because of this extremely length, it is called a longgrave. In North Germany and Denmark you will find more longgraves.

The longgrave has been archeological searched in 1913 and 1960. They found outside the stonewreath several holes (ritual or sacrificeholes?) which were covered by pulled over stonewreathstones. On the original place of these stones were put replacements. This kind of holes has been took up later in the hill, so the stonewreathstones and the hill were lengthen several meters.

In 1960 the longgrave was restaurated partly.

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The original zoo is in the middle of the citycentre of Emmen. In 2002 a second part of the zoo is opened at the edge of the centre. A huge pedestrian traverse connects the two parts through the centre of Emmen.

In the new part of the zoo is the South American section. At the Playa Pinguinos you can walk between the pinguins, allthough they made a low fence later, because some of the pinguins liked to walk out of the zoo into the town of Emmen. You can also watch the swimming pinguins under water.

In 2007 they started to make plans to move the whole zoo to this new part. The actual zoo in hte city centre will be transformed into a 'zoo for humans' to live in special houses still ahving the feel of the continents of the former zoo and to spend their leisure time.

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The zoo in Emmen has a beautifull butterfly garden. In a colourfull tropical garden with many flowering plants you can walk between the many colourfull butterflies.

Sometimes a butterfly will come and sit down on your hand. I prefer to go there on a rainy or cold sunday to enjoy the tropics of the garden. It's a relaxing place to sit down for a while

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The zoo has a nice african savannah with rhino's, zebra's, ostriches, wildebeasts, giraffes and impalas. It's one of my favourite places in the zoo.

At one point you're a eye height with the giraffes. Here are always a lot of people around.
I also like it to sit at the terrace of the safari restaurant, especially in the first hour the park opens it doors. It's a nice time to look at the animals.

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The Zoo of Emmen, called the Noorderdierenpark, has a very beautifull rather natural atmosphere. There is a herd of 14 elephants of all ages, an African Savannah with zebras, giraffes & rhinos. Further you can walk in the tropical butterfly-garden, at the Playa Pinguinos and in a huge green South- American bird cage between the butterflies, pinguins or birds. Or what do you think of having dinner with the swimming sharks at the background ?

Entrance fee:
adults: 16 euro, entry single
children: (3-10) 13.50 euro, single entry
adults: 35 euro, the year round
children: (3 to 10) 14 euro, the year round

The province Drenthe the province of hundebeds. You can find 52 of the 54 hunebeds of country in this province.

A hunebed is supposed to be a megalithic skeleton of a burial chambers of 5.500 years old, made of huge boulders of around 25.000 Kg and in the past covered with earth. These boulders came to Drenthe from Scandinavia, transported by the ice-glaciers, in the ice-period of 200.000 years ago.The boulders were dragged to the burial place and piled up to rectangular graves.

In Emmen are 10 hunebeds. The Long Grave is one of a kind in the Netherlands and can further only be found near Oldenburg in Germany.