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.  

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.