VII: Lions and Tiger and

BEARS!!
Bears Invade Stuttgart!
Heroic American Visitor Captures Them!

Today I took the U-bahn (that's a train) to Stuttgart. The Buddy Bears are visiting the area, and I went down to take a look.

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Some artists stylized the bear in native garb, some added accessories, many just used the bear motif as a canvas and added all kinds of country specific items.

There were over a hundred bears, and I took a picture of each one. I didn't realize how long it was going to take to crop and rename them all, whew! It's a good thing I took pics of the footplates on each statue so I'd have a record of what country went with each bear.

There weren't many people there when I started this morning, but as the day went on, more and more viewers showed up to bask in the awesomeness of ursine statuary.

There were lots of different styles, and many really neat looking ones. Of course I'm partial to the U.S. bear, but the Chinese bear looks kinda-sorta like a deranged Winnie the Pooh, which really tickled me; the Irish bear was designed as a leprechaun; the Yemen bear actually looked more pig-like, but I still thought it was pretty cool. The Iraq bear had some kids on a flying carpet; it was very Aladdin-like. If you look closely, and I don't know if it's noticeable in my amateur photography skills, you can see that the four children on the carpet are black, white, red and yellow. I was pretty happy to see that, especially on a bear from Iraq...makes you think, no?

However, the greatest bear of all, in my humble opinion, belongs to the fine specimen from Moldova. I thought it was both original and hilarious.

Since I was in the area, I took a few shots of the local park that the bears were inhabiting. (I think the fountain needs Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey and Chandler in it though. Yes, I realize Ross isn't in that list; I don't like him.)
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Enjoy!