Exhibition "The aliens are coming"

This exhibition is integrated into the “Wassererlebnis Mini-Donau” site and is included in the entrance fee.
 
The “Wassererlebnis mini-Donau” was created after the criteria of sustainable environmental education. The experience of the element water and the independent designing of the river landscape are the guiding principles of the mini Danube.

For this purpose diverse opportunities for free and independent exploring and experimenting are offered at different stations.
 
The stations are suitable for children and adolescents of all ages.
 
Six sections from the spring to the estuary give an insight and information about the river dynamics, landscape and life by the water with interactive building games.
 
1. Station: Spring of the Danube
“Here our guests can guess on which underground they are wading.” So: Take off your shoes and go into the fresh water in the traditional “Kneipp” way. Four different types of stones are incorporated into the stream and massage your feet while walking.

2. Station: Alpine mountain river with a storage power station and a barefoot pathway for your senses 
“Here mill wheels are integrated into the river stream and during flooding their functionality is tested”
Everyone, who has enough strength and braveness to go onto the walls of the storage power station, can open the floodgates and cause a flooding of the mini Danube. The mill wheels, incorporated into the river stream, are starting to turn. The mineralogical lab “Geologisches Gesteinslabor” presents different types of stones of the Danube region. 
 
3. Station: Natural attraction “Schlögener Schlinge” and run-of-river power plant
“Here you can easily test how passing through the locks functions.”
Small rafts and ships can be guided through self-made floodgates. Easily pictured, the guest understands how the locking of ships functions.
 
4. Station: River construction in the basin landscape
“Here river builders can design individually the river stream’”
Shovels, rakes, buckets…just everything you need to change the stream of the small river is provided at the cash area.  You can design individually which path the water follows through the riverbed. Great fun for children and for the young at heart.
 
5. Station: Iron Gates
„At the Southern Carpathians the Danube has no choice but to go through the narrow breakthrough valley between Rumania and Serbia."
It gets also narrow for everyone, who dares to go on our balance path! Those, who fall into the water, should better have some clothes for changing. Across the Iron Gates lies the “Donauländer Kinderkreis.” Here all emblems of the ten Danube countries are visualized.
 
6. Station: Danube Delta, Black Sea, with cable ferry and Huso (sturgeon)
“Here lies the sturgeon species Huso – with a length of 9 metres especially impressive!”
Nymphs and water spirits, painted by children, welcome guests to the Danube Delta by the Black Sea. Anyone who likes can enjoy the view from the market house. On the other side you can find the “Huso”, which is a wooden and climbable sturgeon. Brave ones dare the passage to the other shore.
 
“The aliens are coming“
Who are these aliens that mingle with our native flora and fauna and represses them?
How could they spread out and which effects have they on the balance of species? This and many more questions are discussed in the exhibition “The aliens are coming”.
 
1. Gigantic aquarium with fish of the Danube
Centre piece of our exhibition is our gigantic aquarium. Also the Huso (our sturgeon is 2 metre long!) – the giant of the Danube – and starlets can be experienced closely. While the Huso species doesn’t exist anymore in the Upper Danube valley, the starlet survived in a self-reproduced species.
 
2. Plants on tour
In the entrance area of the exhibition we present non-native plants (neophytes) whose appearance influenced partly our cultural landscape. Other ones are crop plants whose promotion in turn displaced certain native plants from their natural habitat.

3. Interactive playing areas
Watching – understanding – creating
In “Wassererlebnis mini Danube” the Danube can be experienced at six stations from the spring to the estuary. On the “alien path”, which leads you to the gigantic aquarium, you are challenged by an alien quiz and a fish puzzle!