Borkum Vacation - The Accomodation

One of the more difficult challenges to the North Sea vacation was finding a nice, available place to rent.  We had waited fairly late in the planning and found that many many of the places that looked nice were not available in the time we wanted.

The apartment we finally rented was actually one of the first we found, but had put to the side as being perhaps a tiny bit more expensive than we wanted.  It was not crazy or anything, but we thought we could shop around and find a deal.  A couple of things became apparent;

1) in a place as tiny as Borkum, all places cost the same per square metre
2) During peak holiday season, almost everything is booked.

I think in the end we were lucky that the place we decided on was still available two days later when we were done comparison shopping.

As previously shared, here is the outside view of the house.  it is a bigger house, with 6 holiday apartments, three downstairs and three upstairs, all with their own entrance.  we had the upper floor one on the left.

The walkway was very nice with some flowery shrubs.  who doesn't love a shrub?

Then a stair climb up the back brought us to the entrance to our place.  A long set of stairs in back of the house.

Inside a short walk down the hall took us to the livingroom and dining/kitchen.  The whole place was about 64 sqm, which was plenty large enough for our needs.  We were happily surprised with how nice the place was.  Spotlessly clean and decorated with lots of nautical theme.  There was almost no surface without some sort of lighthouse, beach or sea motif on it.  There was a flatscreen tv, stereo and DVD player as well for the inevitable rainy periods of the north.

Bedrooms were a good size, It looks a little cramped in this photo, but that is a product of my poor photography skills more than anything else.  It was larger than our bedroom at home, but we do have a tiny one in our own house.  At home we gave the big rooms to the kids

.The boys were room mates for the week, with Liam getting a huge bed for himself and Henrik having a baby bed down at the foot of Liam's.  It was also comfortable and cozy.

 So, that covers the accommodation on the island.  Like I said, we were 100% satisfied with the place both from the inside of the flat as well as its location (50m from a beach.)  If we decide to go back to Borkum on another vacation, I would absolutely consider renting the same place again.

The trip to Borkum

Last week we had this year's family vacation.  We went to the North Sea island of Borkum this year.  My first trip to the north of Germany.  We decided on Borkum after a discovery on google maps that the coast was a reasonable 6 hour drive.  This was closer than we thought it would be and decided to give this destination a chance.

I did not take any photos of the drive there, but I can sum it up with "bland."   Between our town and Emden where the ferry is located, it is pretty much uninterrupted highway driving.  Just a long flat road with trees along the sides for six hours.  No exciting scenery, and it was a pretty boring drive.  Once we arrived at the ferry, the party started.  Liam had been looking forward to riding on a boat with the car for a while and he was pretty satisfied with the look of the harbour.  We pulled into the queue and waited for loading on the boat.

 The boys were very very good for the car ride there.  We had left Entringen at 5am to make our ferry and they had slept for a good portion of the journey.  They have both always been very good car travellers, and there were no complaints.  Here you see after 6+ hours, they still look jolly as we wait on the ferry.

 After getting loaded on the ferry, we went upstairs and found a nice spot on the deck.  It was a nice sunny day, so sitting out on the boat was a pleasure.  Henrik is in the mighty "ERGOBABY" carrier and having a fun time and this is one of the few moments that Liam was sitting still.  He was running all over the boat in a frenzy of excitement.

 With typical German efficiency, the ferry horn blew right on time and we pulled away from the gates and headed out on the 2.5 hour boat ride to the island.

 At first the ride was nice, and we enjoyed looking at the giant boats in the harbour and the many many windmills along the coast.  After a while it became quite windy and cool and we went below to the cafe to ride the rest of the way.

 Off the ferry and a 6km drive along the island took us to our holiday apartment.  Next update I will venture inside there.  On the whole, the trip there went perfectly, no problems related to kids, cars, traffic or other potential hazards.

Futuromelon

I was recently in the grocery (Kaufland) and I saw this in the produce section.  I am not sure if this is just a Germanization of an existing fruit, or the real name of a melon.

In any case I thought it was an amusing name and all I could think about all day was melons from the future, sent back to our time for summer enjoyment.  Either that or perhaps they are melons that will send you into the future by consuming them, or perhaps eating this melon allows you to see into the future.

I will test the latter theory by eating an entire melon and then playing the lottery.  If things go well, I will be able to afford many many more melons.

Why even bother with presents?

I think its a pretty well known fact that little kids end up playing with the packaging more than the gifts inside. \

This is absolutely true with Henrik as well.  Here I made a rather long film of him enjoying some paper that wrapped a nice birthday gift.  I no longer recall what the gift was and I am pretty sure that Henrik did not play with it as much as this piece of paper.

This love of paper extends well beyond gift wrap.  On the rare occasions that we find ourselves in a restaurant, we can keep Henrik happy and quiet by giving him a menu to amuse himself.  At our own meals, a placemat will keep him busy through most meals.  If he finds his way to Claudia's purse and gets his hands on a package of tissues, it is party time.

If you can stick through the relatively long film, you will also be treated to seeing some of Henrik's sweet rolling moves.

Cool Baby

back from vacation now, with many many many photos to get through.  I still need to have a look at them and get organized.  In the meantime, check out Henrik with sunglasses on.

They are Liam's sunglasses,but we put them on Henrik for a laugh.  For me anyway that was accomplished.

Still on vacation

OK, I know it is a cheap out to post updates like this in advance, but look at this happy fellow and think of him enjoying a similar couch at the north sea.

I am sure that I look much more tired than this right now.

On Vacation

Just because I am on vacation does not mean the site has to be empty. Here is a smiling Henrik

Off on Vacation

We are off to the North Sea island of Borkum for the week. Back on Tuesday the 19th, hopefully with some nice holiday photos.

New School Bag

Liam will start school in September and he got some school preparation gifts already for his birthday. All German kids have the same style of special school bag (Schulranzen) which is apparently ergonomic and perfect and german engineered blah blah blah every kid has one.

Anyhow, like most things, you can get any style/graphic on it you can imagine, from plain solid colours to licensed versions from Star Wars, Bugs Bunny or whatever. We wanted to get one that Liam would be fine with for a few years, nothing that was a fickle trend for him now.

Interestingly, Liam wanted one with a map of the world on it, so we went ahead with that one. Here is the proud schoolboy modelling it for us.

Henrik's Birthday - Part 2

The other big part of the birthday was of course gifts.  There was a nice group of packages waiting for the birthday boy on the big day.

Like every one year old, Henrik really had no idea what was going on.  He did notice the boxes when we put him on the floor near them, but naturally he treated them like any other strange object in his domain.  He poked one or two then rolled off to do something else.

What he needed was a helper to unwrap the gifts.  Lucky for him, big brother Liam is an expert gift unwrapper.

Among the gifts, the one that sparked the most initial interest was the spinning top.  Naturally Henrik could not operate it on his own, but he was very interested in it while in operation.  He particularly liked to knock it over and then yell at it.  The novelty of this toy lasted quite a while and we did a lot of spinning that morning.

Of course, the toy that probably gave the most pleasure to Henrik on this occasion was the wrapping paper.  This is also a universal truth that babies love wrapping paper.  I think he would have happily rolled around the floor shaking it and waving it around.

Basically every gift occasion ends up with Henrik playing mostly with paper and empty boxes.

Extra Post.... hands on with new webOS devices HP Veer, Pre3 and Touchpad

So I just came back from the webOS hands on in my office and I remain as big a fan of the products as ever. I got to touch and play with the HP Veer, Pre3 and Touchpad. My brief impressions of each:

HP Veer:

Build quality is very good, better than I was expecting. It feels slightly firmer than the Pre2 as a slider and there is almost no "wiggle" between the two parts of the phone. It is small. absurdly small. I have childlike tiny hands and I still found the thing to be tiny. The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on given that it is so very tiny, I was just using thumb tips and it went quite ok. I can not imaging doing any long text entry on it, but for a couple of words/URLs it would be fine.

the screen is small enough that I found it difficult to navigate with touch gestures. I was trying out the maps application and I found pinching in and out to zoom to be a little awkward. Readability was fine for things like email and calendar and the tinyness of the phone really would make it great to carry around in pocket. I could even see applications like the GPS exercise mapping app jogstats being better on this device as its so easy to carry around. Using it as a mobile hotspot would also be pretty sweet.

Performance was fast and I found scrolling and navigation with the device to be very responsive, night and day compared with my Pixi Plus. Overall, I would say its an interesting phone for someone who values portability and is not a heavy user. Claudia would probably like it.

I did not take a photo of it myself, but here is an image from the web.

HP Pre3:

Next up I tried the Pre3.

I have to say I have been very interested in this phone since I first saw previews of it back in Feb and I remain frustrated that there have still been no announcements for availability or pricing. Even though I work at the company, no one could give me a hint of info.

The Pre3 is so much the phone for me.... it was awesome. It met all my expectations and I am convinced that I will be getting one of these as close to launch day as possible. Please HP, give me a good discount...

Build quality was amazing. Zero wiggle on the slider mechanism and it felt super tight through the whole range of motion. The phone is just a little larger than the Pre2, but it is exactly the right amount. It was comfortable to hold, both open and closed and felt great. It is fairly much the same size and shape as an iPhone, but more rounded. Here is a blurry photo of me holding it.

The keyboard is just enough bigger than the Pre2's to feel comfortable to type longer texts and I would have no problem composing a long email on this device. I was also very pleased that the sharp edged lip around the keyboard that was on the Pre and Pre2 was gone and there was no discomfort in holding the phone.

The operating system was super fast and responsive. There were not too many apps loaded on the phone, so I was only able to play around with the stock webOS ones. Not much different than the current crop of standard phone apps, but they all ran great.

Surfing on the browser was super fast and responsive and the screen size was great. Not the best website example below due to all the white space, but hey, there was a queue waiting to have a turn on the phone.

I can't stress enough how much I liked this phone and I fully intend to have one soon. Come on HP, release this.

HP Touchpad:

This one is the "big sexy" that HP is talking about these days. The Touchpad tablet device. I was a little nervous to try this out as I had read mostly lukewarm reviews for it so far. complaints about lagginess and slow response is a recurring theme in the write ups I have read from engadget, slashgear, BGR, etc... but I wanted to see for myself.

The tablet looks nice, very much like an iPhone 3Gs blown up to 10 inches. the black plastic curved back felt good in the hand and it was a lot heavier than I was expecting. The screen looked nice and I thought the responsiveness was good. If I have a complaint, it would be that the sensitivity on the sensor to change screen orientation was too high and I found that it changed from portrait to landscape with the slightest tilt. I locked the orientation so I could play around with it and I think that is something I would feel is needed to do in everyday use.

Tablets for me represent a sort of question mark as to where they would fit in my daily routine. I have a laptop and I have a smartphone, why would I need something in the middle? I have played around with the iPad and now the touchpad and I have to say I still feel this way. It was pretty neat and fun to use, but for me was essentially a more portable web browser and email checker. Given that the cost of them is around 500 euro, I still don't see the need for one in my life. It is a fun toy, but felt like a toy.

Henrik's Birthday - Part 1

Henrik reached a major milestone recently and celebrated his first birthday. It has been a year full of ups and downs and Henrik has been a tremendous joy to us over the past year. I think you can sum up his personality pretty much by saying "happy." As most of my pictures of him show, he is a super jolly baby, laughing and smiling most of the day.

So, the celebration of his first year with us involved a lovely cake made by Claudia.

Of course, not having any teeth yet limited Henrik's enjoyment of this, so he went with fruit puree instead. I think its clear that he enjoys it every bit as much as we enjoyed the cake.

Another important aspect of baby birthdays is that Claudia likes nothing better than dressing up babies like sailors. She did it with Liam, and now Henrik as well. You can see from the smile that he does not mind in the least.

So, a wonderful year with a super baby, lets hope the next year will cover exciting new developments like teeth, sitting, standing, pre-school... lots and lots of adventures on the way.

Next post I will cover Henrik and his gifts.

Liam's First Fame

Over here, there is a dedicated children's TV channel called Kinderkanal, which covers all of Liam's TV needs of an evening. One of the features that they have around dinnertime is called the tree house.

A feature on the show is for kids to send in artwork and then it is shown on the program. Liam of course wanted to do this for quite a long time and after a lot of thought, he chose something to draw and sent it in to the program.

After about 3 months, we had a telephone call one morning

from the tv station. They told us that Liam's drawing would appear on the show! To make things even better, Liam's drawing was not one that was just shown in the gallery, but was the one that the host had flown down on a little star and then he talked about it. It was pinned up on the big tree and then the host described it and talked about "Liam from Ammerbuch"

Liam had drawn a jungle scene, with a Giraffe, Antelope and Lion. You can see his signature in the lower left of the artwork.

We did not tell Liam in advance that the TV station had called us, we just made sure that he was watching the show when it came on. When they said his name and showed his picture he got more than a little excited to say the least.

The show also sent Liam a DVD of a cartoon about a zebra and his friends (Zigby) that Liam quite likes. He has now had his first taste of fame.

Bee horror

Recently Liam was introduced to the terror of bees lurking in tall grass. The warm weather has brought sandal season to Entringen. Liam and his friends were out playing around in the lovely fields of clover and tall grass around our house when he managed to step on a bee. The bee naturally reacted poorly to this and gave him a nice big sting.

After a lot of noise and hopping, Liam struggled his way to the couch for treatment. His whole foot went red and balloon like and he developed some pretty ugly blisters on it. Luckily his friend's dad is a doctor and too a look at the balloon foot to reassure us there was nothing to worry about. Some cream was applied and the mega foot wrapped up.

Here is a look at the big ugly blisters, they went all the way around the toe like a lovely blister-ring. I think my photo also does not do justice to the red puffiness of the foot. It looked quite huge.

Return to the Blog

After about a half year of no posts, I am going to try to get back into this Blog at the request of my adoring fans. Starting out slow, here is a nice photo of the Boys.

I just like the way they are looking at each other. I think one of the great pleasures that Liam has given me is his attitude towards Henrik. He has never shown the slightest jealousy for the new guy in the house and if anything is almost too loving and has to be held back a bit from him at times.

Henrik is clearly a fan of his big brother as well. Actually, Henrik is such an easy going jolly guy he is pretty much a fan of everything.

I dont know if I will return to my prolific levels of blogging of the past, but I will make an effort to get some regular posts up here again.

I do take requests if anyone wants to see anything in particular on here.

Business Trips are not glamorous

Sometimes for my job I have to take a business trip.  They are less and less frequent thankfully and I often opt out when I can.  However, when I do go somewhere, it is usually to a place that sounds nice.  Paris, Barcelona, etc.  I know my wife has a totally different image in her head as to what a work trip is like.

I was fairly recently in Barcelona for a week, which sounds quite nice.  Here are the realities.

1) the office is not IN Barcelona, it is in Sant Cugat.  Which is a fair bit outside.  Here are a few comparisons.  Its like saying you are in Stuttgart when you are really in Böblingen.  Or you are in Toronto when you are really in Brampton or even that you are in New York but are really in New Jersey.

2) flying many short connecting flights in economy on the cheapest possible airline ticket is not nice.

3) in Barcelona I stay at the hotel which is walking distance to work.  about a 15 min walk in an industrial zone.  I am not knocking the hotel, it is clean and relatively comofortable, but this is FAR from luxury:

My room is firmly decorated with Spain’s glorious history in mind:

 

and I would be remiss if I did not mention that the hotel is across the street from a power plant, offering delightful views…  Picturesque Barcelona at its finest.

 

So, each morning, I wake up at the normal time, stroll over to the HP site, which is quite nice.  But really just a typical factory site with some palm trees in front of the entrance.

   

It also seems that when in Spain, my head is even more massive than in germany.  Look at the size of this melon in my skillful self portrait.       When I am there, I am just staying someplace not as nice as my own home, and going to an office very similar to the one I see every day.  There is nothing exciting or glamorous about business trips.

Happy New Year – random old photos

Well, 2011 is here and I once again will try to do better with my posting… pre Christmas was busy and full of sick people, including myself.

I would also be lying if i did not admit I played a bunch of xbox and world of warcraft instead of updating the blog, but hey, its MY free time.  you will take what you get and like it.

Here are some photos from our trip to Baiersbronn, where we went for cake at what was apparently one of the “50 best restaurants in the world.”  Baiersbronn has more Michelin stars per capita than anywhere else on earth apparently.  It was very good cake and the place was pretty posh.

Here is the fancy display full of cakes.  As it is in the black forest, there was really no other choice for me than Black Forest Cake.Here is a nice looking slice of cake.Liam had a cheesecake, since he does not like black forest.  You can also see some bits of Claudia here as I am far too lazy to crop the photo properly right now.      MMMMMM cake.