Brief Hiatus

Hello all,

Won't be posting while my sister and family are here visiting.  Will resume (with storys of wongventures) once they have returned home.

Day one of our full house has gone nice and smooth though.  Kids all get along well.

Mainau - Part 2

Giant floral sculptures continued along the island as you can see here with these enormous ducks.  I enjoy a good huge duck when I can find one.  As you can see from the crowd, this location seems to be particularly popular with buses full of pensioners.

We started to walk a tour around the island which took us past a wide variety of garden types.  I quite liked the "weinberg" which was a nice little vineyard on a hill.  I thought the little tower and path had a sort of storybook quality to it.

This little building is the post office for the island.  Since there are no residents on Mainau, I think it is just there now for the novelty of having a postmark from there.  It was a funny little building though and certainly a lot of people were taking photos of it along with me.

Here are Mum and Liam posing alongside busts of the founders/original patrons of the island.  I think it is unusual to have a statue that is wearing glasses.  I even take mine off for photographs (vanity and fear of flash reflections.)

Last photo for today is the large rose garden that was immediately next to the post office.  Quite big and there seemed to be some sort of private event taking place.  It was a fancy reception of some kind, but did not quite look fancy enough for a wedding.  I would venture a guess that this is a popular place to have weddings since there is quite good photo opportunities all over the place.

Mainau - Part 1

Back in June, when the sun was still shining here and my mother was over for a visit, we went down to Lake Constance and visited the island of Mainau.

Mainau is a little place on the lake that is devoted to extravagant gardens and a big butterfly sanctuary.  The perfect place for a mum-trip (with good weather)  Also, lots of nice pram friendly walking paths.

After parking on the mainland we bought our tickets to the park and walked across the two short bridges it takes to get to the island.  Since the weather was pretty good, there were quite a lot of people and buses of tour groups were arriving pretty steadily.

One of the first things you see when reaching the island is a 10 foot tall flower sculpture in the shape of the islands mascot/logo.  At least, there is a cartoon version of this on all of their marketing materials.  It was pretty impressive to see it in giant flower form, although part of me thought it looked a bit like an over-friendly triffid.

Like most parks with water, there were many ducks.  Liam the animal lover found some right away and had to make every effort to get as close as possible to them.  I think in his mind all animals deep down want to be hugged by him.  We are always having to explain that animals mostly just want to be left alone and maybe do some snacking.  Quite a lot like me actually.

The next impressive floral display was a huge peacock.  This was about 15 feet across at the back and you can see I struggled to get the whole image in frame.  Does this count as topiary?  I am not sure if that applies only to hedges or if floral sculptures also fit the category.  At any rate, it was a nice big flowery bird.

And right next to the flowery peacock was a nice shady bench and pool with a peacock fountain.  I am a big fan of fountains in general and I can't really say why.  It looks like it's somehow genetic though since Liam also enjoys them.  There is something that is just fun about a nice water display.

 More to come in the next post!  It's a big park.

Henrik's progress

Henrik is of course developing a little more slowly that a normal kid would and has weekly sessions of physiotherapy to help build up his muscles.  He is now 15 months old and still can not sit up on his own, crawl or really even drag himself along.

He can however roll like a champion.  Especially since we returned from holiday, we have noticed that he is pretty much a rolling speed demon.  Last week I had to install all the baby gates at stair locations to ensure we don't have him rolling himself right to the emergency room.  Funny enough, the therapist says there does not seem to be too great a reason that should not be dragging himself (robben auf Deutsch) or even crawling, he is just too lazy to do so when he is having a good time with all the rolling.

Among his favorite toys is this trapeze thing, that he likes to drag all over the room.  

But here is Claudia doing some sitting up exercises with him.  When you help him get there, he can sit up with both arms propping him up.  Claudia tells me that last week he also held himself up with only one arm while using the other to play with a toy, but I have not managed to see that in person yet.

He can even maintain this keeling position, all ready to crawl if the lazy bones would just get to it....

 I am sure that at some point Henrik will realize that added mobility can open up whole new realms of fun, but its slow going and all we can do is encourage him.  You can't force a baby to do your bidding, otherwise he would already be bringing me snacks as I recline on the couch.

Here is a final video of some Henrik moves.  Not his best rolling, but it gives an idea of his technique and there are some smiles in there, which are always a pleasure.

The new king of inline

One of Liam's big birthday wishes this year was to get rollerblades.  I am not sure what turned him on to the idea, but he had been talking about inline skates for months before his birthday.  Funny enough, we had offered to get him some for his birthday the year before and again at Christmas, but he was not interested.  One morning whatever magic switch that lives in Liam's brain flipped and he then knew that skating was the route to happiness.

So, we got him a nice pair of blades that will expand for the next couple of years as he grows and all of the appropriate safety gear.  Of course he had to try on everything right away to make sure it was as awesome as the fantasy.

Clearly he was a pretty proud guy.   Sadly, the day he got them was pouring rain and we could not take them out for a spin.  Our house is not nearly big enough for indoor roller blading, so he had to be content with standing and smiling at them for a little while.

 The weather did clear up later in the week and the ground dried out enough to go for our first lesson.  At the end of our street is a tiny dead end road that is flat and empty.  It is pretty newly paved so its also nice and smooth to roll along.

For the first outing, I taught him how to stand and roll along, and we just did some laps back and forth on the road with me holding his hand.  I was pretty satisfied with his progress, and by the end of the session, he would hold my hand for one direction and then go on his own for the other. Very adventurous for Liam.  Of course there were quite a few spills, but he did not get discouraged and was right back on his feet after every fall.  The safety gear was quickly broken in.

After about an hour, his ankles got tired and we called it a day.  He did keep at it though, and now he is scooting around the neighbourhood with his friends that can also skate.  He has told me that he wants to play hockey, so when he is stable on his skates, I think I will get him a bigger stick and we can give that a try.

Wrapping up the vacation

Well, I think I have covered our holiday pretty thoroughly now... So I will wrap it up with some final images of the island that I liked.

All in all it was a very nice vacation and I would certainly go back to the north sea for a future holiday.

Garden Shark

Walking along a nice residential street, Liam yelled out suddenly that he saw a shark.  I thought he was just talking a lot of his usual nonsense, but he then pointed this out to me.

A rather interesting display...

Garden decorations are pretty popular here, I think the garden gnome is of German origin.  You can usually see some pretty spectacularly tacky displays of gnomes, castles, windmills and whole farming scenes.  I think I could devote an entire blog to horrible garden displays in and around the Stuttgart area.

I have never seen a shark before though.  I think if this was my yard, and I had already decided to go the shark-route I would spice it up with some bloody gnome limbs, or maybe a head peeking out of the mouth.  Now that I think of it, I think it would be an excellent prank to sneak into this yard at night and add a head or arm into the sharks mouth.

The Borkum Feuerschiff

On a not so nice weather day, we thought Liam would enjoy going to have a look at the "fire ship." This is a decommissioned fire dept rescue ship that now serves as a museum.  There are some exhibits showing the environment and wildlife of the island along with some rooms showing how the boat used to operate.

 Liam likes all forms of transport.  Trains are still the absolute favorite, but boats are pretty high up the list as well.  The fact that it was a FIRE ship just raised the level of awesome in his eyes.  He was especially interested to point out the anchor to me.

 Of course, it would not be a great visit if he was not allowed to get behind the wheel of the boat.  At some point of the trip he had already advised us he planned a career driving the ferry.  He has since returned to the main career path of future train driver, but I think he got to live a bit of his fantasy here.  I think he looks quite nautical.

Borkum - Segway Scooters

One day in Borkum, we were walking down to the beach, when we were suddenly passed by a trio of segway drivers.  I had actually never seen a segway in person before that moment, and even as a lifelong geek I have to say they looked pretty lame.  They were not particularly fast and I really dont know why I would choose a segway over a bicycle...  A bike seems to be better in every possible way and if I am too lazy to pedal, an e-bike would be cooler than this thing.

I took this picture of them as they drove by and I thought it made a nice image of old vs new.  I also like the look of incredulity that the old folks on the bench are giving the scooter drivers.

OK, so I think they would be lame as something to own and use regularly, I will say that they would probably fun to have a ride on.  For one of the first times every, this was a piece of technology that seemed to interest Claudia more than me.  She found them "fun" enough looking to investigate them.  In addition to being ubernerdy, they are expensive.  On the island, the rental of one was running around 30 euro an hour.  They don't look nearly that much fun.

Borkum Vacation - New Light House

A very prominent feature of the island is the new light house.  It stands directly in the middle of the town and still functions.  I think the marine traffic use the even newer, radio lighthouse and GPS more for navigation, but there is something particularly nice about a regular lighthouse.

Since visitors are allowed to walk to the top, we had to do this.  Unfortunately the weather was pretty grey and crappy on the day we went up.  This photo of the lighthouse exterior is from two days earlier when it was much nicer out.

 Of course going up a lighthouse means lots and lots of winding stairs.  Claudia and Henrik went to look in some more pram friendly shops while Liam and I braved the steps.  I was asked quite a few times if it was much farther to the top.  It was not really that many in my opinion, but Liam is a lazy bones.

 At the top of the winding staircase, there is a ladder to navigate to get to the final top level of the lighthouse.  By now, Liam was pretty tired of climbing, but also excited to get a look outside.

 Here you can see the lovely grey cloudy sky that was present at the time.  This is the view back in the direction of our apartment and the radio lighthouse.  We could not see far enough to get a look ant neighbouring islands due to the fog, but we could see all of Borkum relatively well.

 Another look at the town.  Population 5000 residents, and about 200,000 vacationers per year.

 The beach huts looked like toys to me from up there.

 A lot of the time at the top of the lighthouse was spent searching for Claudia and Henrik.  Liam really wanted to see what they would look like "as tiny people" but try as we did, we could not locate them.

Borkum Vacation - Wattenmeer (The Mud Flats)

The Island of Borkum is located on the "Wadden Sea" which as wikipedia has informed me is an intertidal zone in the south eastern part of the north sea.  There are extensive mud flats between the island and the mainland (watt) and Wattwandern (Mud hiking) is a popular recreational activity.

We singed up with a tour to take in some of the nature and see what the mud had to offer.  It was not the most beautiful day, but not pouring rain either.  It was cool and windy, so we were dressed for the possibility of rain, but in shorts as well to enjoy walking on the sea bed.

The area we did the hike on is underwater at high tide, so you have to schedule the excursion for the appropriate time of day.  There is also some quite dangerous zones of quicksand and sudden drop offs, to it is best to have an experienced guide lead you.

Here is the start of the walk.  It is pretty clear where the mud flat begins...

Here are some photos of Claudia and the kids at the start of the tour.  We are not cold or wet yet, so there are plenty of smiles.

We would walk along the flat and every few minutes the guide would give us some facts and show us some feature.  Usually we were all gathered in a circle around the object of discussion.  Here we had just been told all about mussels, which we gathered up, had a look at and then replaced on the mud to watch quickly burrow back into the sand.  It was pretty interesting how quickly they dug their way in.  I never thought of shellfish as being quick before.

A little farther along, we saw this fellow.  Liam thought he was a pretty neat little friend.  Not cuddly enough to want to bring him home with us though.  Mr Pinchy.

It was a fun experience and I would recommend it to anyone finding themselves up on the coast.  Bring a rain/windproof jacket though, definitely an essential piece of kit.  Here is a last pick of the mudwalkers just before returning to the warm dry comfort of our apartment for lunch.

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Borkum Holiday - Seal Watching

One day when the weather was sunny and nice (although a little cool and windy,)  We decided to go on a seal watching walk.  This was something for just Liam and I as Henrik was not a big fan of being out in the strong winds.  Liam on the other hand had been talking about seals non stop for days already.

The walk started from the town centre, which is just a few steps from the north beach.  A crowd started to gather around the tour leader.  What looked like a small group at first ended up with about 40 people by the time all had arrived.

The leader of the tour was a local fellow who was also a national park guide.  We had already done a tour of the mud flats (Wattenmeer) with him and thought he was very good.  He gave some amusing stories about the history of the island and told us a lot about the animals that we would see.  

As you can see, Liam was pretty wound up with the prospect of seeing some real live seals.  I had my fingers crossed at this point that he would not be disappointed.  I knew in his mind he was going to be jumping in the middle of a big group of seals and then hugging and patting them.  I was trying to get him to understand we would be looking at them from a distance and they were wild animals.

After a long long walk, we finally came to the beach of seals.  There was a little fence marking the line that we could not cross, giving the seals their own private beach.  We could see lots of them lounging about, with this group being the closest and easiest to photograph.  Liam also thought the seagull was pretty exciting.

Then, Liam made an exciting discovery and raced over to check something out...

A baby seal was sleeping on the beach just an arms length from the fence.  This became the highlight of the trip and was all Liam could talk about for a long long time.  He was a pretty cute Seal, but clearly very sleepy.

He did wake up with a big yawn, which was also super cure of course.

Followed by a nice look at his little seal face.  It was a great effort to keep Liam from jumping the fence and bringing him home with us.   He was pretty sure that the seal would like to live in our bathtub, where we could feed him many fish apparently.

 

After some moments, the seal grew bored with us and rolled over for some more nap.  

 All in all a fine seal walk that lived up to expectations.  Aside from not getting a new pet, I think Liam was very satisfied with the seal experience.

Borkum Holiday - The Beach

One of the great things about the place we rented is that it was on the last street of the island before the beach.  In fact, the beach was about 50m from our door, something we took advantage of right away since the sun was shining.

The North Sea is pretty well known for these striped baskets/tents that are set up all over every beach.  The area is often very windy, so you need a nice sheltered base established to enjoy some nice quiet beach time.

Although it was only 22 degrees on the first day, it felt a lot warmer and the beaches were pretty full of folks in swimwear.  Liam had never been to a big beach before and he was pretty excited with the whole idea of it. He really did not care about the water at all and just wanted to run around the sand for the longest time.  Eventually he discovered the joy of digging holes near the waterline and watching waves come fill them in.  That was a real party.

In this picture you can see the dune covered with shrubbery.  That is all that separated our house from the beach.  One road and one hill with some shrubs.  Can't ask for a better location really...

Another attraction of the beach was this trampoline area.  A large fenced in area with 4x5 grid of trampolines for kids to go crazy.  Liam really wanted to do this, but then he suddenly forgot all about it in favour of playing in the sand and water.  It was funny that he never came back to the idea of trampolining, but that can always be a future activity for another trip I suppose.

The beach near us was the "south" beach, which was the smaller of the two on the island, despite the fact it was about 2km long.  The north side of the island had the large beach, which was easily 3x the size of the smaller one.  It took up the entire north coast of the island.  It was also divided into massive zones.  The bathing zone, the windsurfing zone, the dog friendly zone and kite flying zone.   There was also the naked suntanning zone, but we did not check that part out.  

Below is a panorama of the bathing zone.

Back on our tiny beach, here is a nice image of the radio lighthouse.  Liam and I both really liked the look of this.

Finally, here is a rare photo of me.  Captured on the promenade overlooking the north beach.  Liam is sporting his Peter Puck hat, a current favorite that I approve of.