fub | Entries tagged with vacation

I managed to get 3,5 weeks of PTO in October/November. I haven’t been taking a lot of PTO so I still had quite a few days saved up, even from two years back, and when I explained to my (American) manager how the PTO system works in the Netherlands she was keen on me using up some of those days. She and my direct colleague were OK with me taking that many days off, so that’s what I applied for — and what got approved. I wanted some extra days, because with Russian airspace closed for European air traffic, flights to Japan take much longer! So you’d spend two days on the trip instead of one, so you’d “lose” two days at your destination. So with 3,5 weeks of PTO, we’d net 3 weeks in Japan.

It’s been 7 years since we were last in Japan! Tourism to Japan is booming, but we’ve already seen the hotspots so we don’t have to do the “golden route” of Tokyo – Kyoto – Osaka. Instead, we’ve become interested in Tohoku, the region up north on the main island of Honshu. We’d fly into Tokyo Haneda airport, spend one night in Tokyo before taking the shinkansen to Sendai, the largest city in Tohoku. We’d spend a few days there, seeing the sights of Sendai and visiting Yamadera and Matsushima (one of the top three views in Japan!) with Sendai as our base of operations. After that, we’d rent a car and go into the country-side! With stops at Zao, a few days in Yonezawa and a few days in Aizuwakamatsu before returning to the coast and following that up back to Sendai. We’re closing off with a week in Tokyo to rest up from all the travel and to visit some interesting districts and shops in Tokyo itself, before flying back from Narita.

Finding things to see and do is relatively easy, and the tourism promotion from those prefectures and cities is doing a good job of showing off their highlights. But booking hotels is a bit of a challenge. It’s easy to find hotels, but not every hotel has a website in English. Of course, you can use translation tech to turn that into English, but I am hesitant to use those during the actual booking — what if there is an error in the translation and I’m booking the wrong thing? As a rule, I try to book at the hotel site directly, because I dislike intermediaries. But a few times now I have had to hold my nose and book through an English intermediary website because otherwise I would not have been able to book. In the “countryside” (the Tohoku accents are used as shorthand for “country bumpkin” in Japanese media…) the number of overseas tourists is relatively low and not every hotel is able to make the investment for an English-language version of their website.

I’ve also been booking twin rooms. It’s not as cozy to sleep in two separate beds, but our regular bed is 2m wide — and in Japan a 1m40 wide bed is considered a “double”, it’s just not comfortable for us. We do have some rooms with tatami, where you’d lay out your futon by yourself, so there we have a bit more flexibility.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: busy

We decided that we want to visit Japan again this year. We’ll be aiming at visiting the Tohoku region around mid-April, when the cherry blossoms are in bloom there. We’re doing research on how to get there, and what spots we want to visit.

Of course, the earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 2011 is still fresh in everyone’s memory. There are some specific spots to commemorate, such as the 3.11 museum, but there are a lot of ‘generic’ touristy spots that have been touched by the tragedy. You’d look through a list of recommended spots, and there’s a field where a farmer grows rapeseed and makes a maze out of it — a fun activity for the kids! And that’s all fine and dandy, but then you read that he started doing this to process his grief over losing his parents and his two young children in the 2011 earthquake/tsunami and suddenly it doesn’t feel so lighthearted and fun anymore.

Or a spot for cherry blossoms, and there’s a link to a site about it, with pictures and reports of all the past years. And then you translate the page, and you see that the first entries were from 2012, when the village was closed off because it was in the nuclear exclusion zone around the Fukushima power plant and the city workers got special permission to enter the village to photograph the cherry blossoms so that the residents would not have to feel so lonely and isolated from their village…

The exclusion zone is now a lot smaller, and the radiation outside of that zone is similar to background radiation in other places. Japan expects around 33 million foreign visitors this year, but I expect there to be a lot less tourists in Tohoku. And there are some beautiful spots there, we’re really looking forward to it.

And then yesterday there was another large earthquake, this time centered around the Noto peninsula. Less than half as powerful as the 2011 quake, but it still did a lot of damage. Luckily the subsequent tsunami was not very powerful. It’s a stark reminder that Japan is basically a collection of volcanoes, and that nature is unpredictable.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: pensive

We had our, now traditional, week of vacation on Texel. As always on the same spot, but our experience was a bit different because this time we had brought our bikes with us — and the cycling is good on Texel.

Last year we got stuck in a huge traffic jam to get to the island, because one of the ferries was taken out of rotation, so we made sure to get to Den Helder on time. We did get in a long line of slow traffic, which made us fear the worst, but it turned out that there was a traffic accident and once we were past that, we could basically just roll onto the ferry.

We checked in, and got some chocolates to go with our tea! Texel is known for its sheep, and while you can find a lot of wool products on the island, Texel sheep are kept for their meat — their wool is not fit to spin into yarn, so any yarn on the island is “imported”!

We had never really explored the east side of the island. We’ve been there, but with a car your options to walk around are limited. So for the first day, I plotted a bicycle route across the island from De Koog (where we were staying), through the oldest bird sanctuary on the island (only accessible on foot or bicycle!) to the east side, with a long stretch along the coast of the Wadden Sea. It is a beautiful route, and we had a great time. We came upon the IJzeren Kaap (“Iron Cape”), a navigational beacon that wasn’t lit up but could be used during the day.

I don’t think we’ve ever visited Oostereind before, but I definitely want to go back and walk around there some time. It was very traditional and cosy. I’m sure it’s packed with tourists at the height of the season, and it was still busy enough, but it was manageable.

The National Park Dunes of Texel is really something. The sand dunes have been overgrown with tough vegetation (it has to be tough to thrive there!) and the height differences make for an interesting landscape. There’s some good hiking to be done there.

Of course, we couldn’t resist getting ice cream, especially not at the “Ice cream farm”. We took a little detour to get there — it’s mostly a large playground and a petting zoo with an ice cream shop attached to it. The ice cream was nice (though not spectacular) and the highlight of the visit were the two little peachicks that were scurrying about, supervised by their mother.

We did not get all the way to the lighthouse, but we did see it. The bicycle path took us right along the border between the dunes and the cultivated land.

Some people are confused whether “Texel” is pronounced “Tek-sel” or “Tes-sel”. This gable stone in Den Burgh sets the record straight.

Last year, a 1000 piece puzzle featuring a cartoon by Jan van Haasteren showing various locations and scenes from Texel was bought. This year it was assembled over the course of many evenings. We had to eat with our plates on our lap because the table was filled with puzzle pieces…

And of course we also visited the Slufter, a kind of tidal flats and bird sanctuary.

We had, once again, a lovely time. Bringing the bicycles with us really added to the experience, and it was great we could use the pedal assist when riding against the headwind… We got to new places because of this, and we really enjoyed that. Though it also must be said that some parts of the cycle route were closed off without any proper detours marked. That left us scrambling to find an alternative, and it detracted from the experience. I mean, I understand roads and paths need maintenance (and I certainly look forward to riding across that smooth new asphalt!) but just closing off main routes without an alternative is not good. We had instances where trying to find an alternative added several kilometers to our route. Nothing we couldn’t handle, but it detracted from the fun of the moment.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: tired

We hadn’t really made any plans for our summer, and when we checked with my sister the verdict was that they were happy to host us again in their summer house. We had to delay our trip by two weeks because there was no place in the kitty hotel, but that was not a big problem for us.

We went by car again, and once again across the great belt bridge. It’s a longer drive (especially with all the road works going on in Germany, and especially around Hamburg!) but the toll is significantly cheaper than the Puttgarden-Rodby ferry. And we like that you don’t need to be at a certain place at a certain time, or just take your luck with how busy the ferry is.

It was great to see the family again, we don’t get to see them that often. Though we stayed at the summer house for the most time, so we did not intrude on their domestic life that much. That’s also where my sister has her glass workshop, so we also got some good ‘glassing’ in!

You can make shapes in glass by putting the glass in a ceramic mold, and as it melts it will take that shape. Turns out my sister had a mold for buttons! She was not that interested in it, but we were! So we made this batch of eight buttons, made of scraps of glass in different colours.

I made a set of seven glass poppies. The technique is a lot of fun: discs of transparent glass, and then mixing water with coloured glass powder to create a ‘slurry’. I used a red base with a dot of yellow on top, and because it’s a bit runny, the colours blend a bit, which gives exactly the right effect! Some black glass grit provides the black specks, and as it all melts together you get this result! I glued iron wire to the backs so the poppies can be stuck into the ground.

I made a glass portrait of the cat of a friend. We mostly exchange kitty pics, so I had quite a few good shots of her cat. And indeed, when I sent her this photo, she immediately recognised her cat in it! This is going to make its way to her.

I didn’t try to make a portrait like this from Mikan or Yuzu, because you just can’t get that tortoiseshell exactly right — I guess you could do a black, white and orange slurry, and that would result in a tortoiseshell cat, but would not afford the kind of precise control you’d need to get it exactly right for a specific tortoiseshell cat…

Klik made these panels to go into a LED-powered lantern. A nice mix of techniques and colours.

We had bought metal holders that originally held discs of (ugly) glass at a furniture store. We discarded the original discs, because we wanted to make a disc of our own to go into it! This is a bit of abstract art, which I called “Eclipse of the midnight sun”.

This is easily the most impressive piece, made by Klik. It took two tries to get the dish correctly shaped, and the result is spectacular!

We also met up with a former colleague, one of the two that live in Denmark that I still play RPGs with! We had a really nice evening at the sea-side, eating and chatting. That evening was actually our 20th wedding anniversary, and to mark the occasion we went out for dinner with my sister and her husband, to a Japanese teishoku restaurant where we had been before. The food was (again) great and we had a nice time.

The next day we walked around Copenhagen city centre, and at the end of the afternoon I had an event from ProductTank, a world-wide network of product management meetups. I had been there before with a colleague, back when I still worked for the company with the Copenhagen office I regularly visited. So I contacted him, and we met up at this meetup. The meetup was interesting, and afterwards we went out for a beer and a good chat — I had not spoken to him in three years, so we had to catch up for a bit.

It was a great vacation, though with all of the glass work it was maybe not as restful as it could have been — but we have some beautiful glass pieces in return!

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: productive

A few weeks ago, we took our (now traditional) Texel vacation. We had booked a bit earlier in the season (in hopes of getting better/good weather) and we had a bigger chalet than previous years — mostly because my mother-in-law (who insists to pay for it) wanted to have a bigger shower. She and my sister-in-law go one week before us, so they stay there two weeks and we join them for the last week.

The ferry service to Texel has two boats. It takes about 20 minutes to cross, and with 5 minutes loading and unloading, they can manage to make a full round-trip every hour. So on busy days, when they use both, there is a ship leaving either end every 30 minutes. However, the largest of the two had engine trouble, so it was not in service — which meant a vastly reduced capacity, on one of the busiest days. Which meant it took us about four hours to get to the other side.

We tried to keep our spirits up, but that got harder as it took longer and longer. We were so, so tired when we arrived — luckily our beds had already been made and dinner was ready for us!

Things did not go well for long, as my sister-in-law tested positive for COVID-19. She was coughing a lot, but did not suffer a lot of other symptoms, which was lucky. But it did restrict our activities a bit. We compensated by getting take-out from a few restaurants, and we decided we actually kinda liked it: good food and it’s more relaxed than sitting in a restaurant the whole evening. (We kept doing self-tests all through the week, but all of ours came up negative, too.)

Ever since we went to Texel, we tried to get a ride on a horse-drawn carriage that would go to the Slufter, a nature preserve where the sea is allowed to come through a gap in the dunes, creating tidal flats. But we never got around it: either it was full, or it was raining too hard, or there were too few participants… But this year we managed (though my sister-in-law could not join us…)

We went to the designated bus stop and there it was!

We were seated towards the front of the carriage. Klik and her mother were on the second bench from the front, I was right behind them. It was kinda rainy and windy, so the plastic covers had been zipped up. That limited the view to the side, so it was good we could look out the front. The driver talked a lot and pointed out all kinds of interesting stuff along the way, which was very entertaining.

The route took us to the Slufter, and because the tide had been especially high, the horses had to draw the carriage partially through the water. At the edge of the beach, the carriage was parked and we got tea and coffee. We were free to look around and stretch our legs for a bit, but of course we couldn’t do any serious exploring.

Those Belgian draft horses are big. On the left is Nel, who is a bit younger and who needed a bit of careful coaching from the driver to keep up the work! On the right is Lies, who is more experienced and who dragged Nel with her at times — which annoyed her a bit. “Lies” and “Nel” are quite old-fashioned Dutch women’s names, I like that.

Apparently the stable has a side-business making some kind of flavoured rum, and of course they gave people a taste and made sure to tell them where they could get it…

Apart from all of the troubles, it was once again a good vacation. We’ve already made the reservations for next year.

On the Friday we would leave, the second ship wasn’t running either, so we left at the moment the camping gates opened — very early, but we didn’t want to take any chances. We got on the boat right away, so that went well. This also meant we were home a lot earlier than we would usually be, but that was not a problem at all: we could get our kitties from their ‘hotel’ one day earlier!

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: relaxed

Of course, with everything moving so quickly, we didn’t have time to make extended vacation plans. It’s only three weeks anyway before I start my new job, so it wasn’t worth it to go somewhere far away. But my sister, who lives near Copenhagen, had invited us over — and we hadn’t been there in years, so it would be fun to stay with them again. They now also have a vacation home, and the shed there has been converted into a glass art studio. After a few days in Copenhagen, we moved to the vacation home and my sister visited a few times to help us make a glass project!

I have been really interested in the glass ‘dots’: drops of glass that you stick to a transparent piece of glass. It’s what I used for the Estus flask. But instead of firing it very hot for a ‘full fuse’, where the dots melt completely and you get left with smooth glass, I wanted a cooler firing so that the dots remained domed. My sister gave me a circle of transparent glass: a reject from a commission she’s working on right now, but perfect for my purpose.

I did not have a pre-set plan and just went where the size and colours of the dots took me.

This was the result of an afternoon fiddling with tweezers and glue. The dots are glued with normal hobby glue — that will burn off in the oven, but at least prevents things from shifting around before then. I may have used too much glue in places, but it did not cause problems.

Of course, if the dots would not melt fully, then there would be space in between them. With stained glass windows in mind, I asked my sister what to do, and she suggested using black glass powder. With a small brush, I brushed that in between the dots. Because it is much finer (really glass dust), it would melt at much lower temperatures. I had to wear an industrial mask — you don’t want to breathe in glass particles. Trust me on that.

It takes about 24 hours for a firing to be complete, as the glass has to stay at certain temperatures for a certain times for proper annealing. And then it has to cool off slowly, otherwise the stresses in the material can cause the glass to shatter. And since the oven uses electricity (and a fair amount of it), it pays to wait until midnight to start heating up the oven — the computer has a ‘waiting stage’ in its program.

That evening, we had arrange to meet up with some of my former colleagues with whom I still play RPGs, and we were back very, very late. So the oven had cooled off enough to open! We were too tired to do anything else than to take out the fire-proof tray with our projects, put in another tray that had been prepared, and turn on the oven. I took a quick snap of my project as it came straight out of the oven.

This is the next morning. The dots act as tiny lenses and refract the light. I do think the black glass in between adds something important. It’s not as nicely spread as I would have wanted. I might have brushed too rigorously because I did not want to run the risk of some specks of black dust getting stuck on the dots themselves and diminish the luster.

You can see how in some places, the black glass did stick to the underside of the dots. But it all has melted while the dots retained their shape.

On this side view, you can see clearly how the dots remained ‘dot-shaped’.

It also works against a darker background. That really brings out the different colours.

This is what it looks like from the ‘back’ of the project. That has a whole different feel to it and shows the ‘stained glass’ effect a bit better.

The dots act as tiny lenses. Here I held it against the carpet in the ‘sun room’, and you can see it reflected/refracted in the dots.

My project used up a lot of dots, and my sister is working on a huge commission that also requires quite a few dots. So I felt a bit responsible and decided to help make more dots.

The cool thing about glass is that when it completely melts (at around 815 Celcius), the surface tension makes it want to become 6 millimeters thick. It will form drops of that thickness, and when it cools off again, those drops harden — that’s what the ‘dots’ are! And with glass being so hard, it is almost impossible to cut round shapes in it: you basically approximate a curve by chipping away smaller, straight pieces. Which means that if you need a lot of different-shaped pieces, you get left with lots of very small pieces.

So the trick of making dots is to collect those pieces and fire them at a high temperature. It takes a hot firing in the oven (and thus quite a bit of time) but it is a great way to recycle what would otherwise be waste material.

The plates that go into the oven are hard ceramic plates, sometimes with a ‘slurry’ on it as a releasing agent. You want to keep some space in between the pieces, so that they don’t melt together.

It is a nice little job to simply take the pieces that are available and arrange them. Very satisfying to see the area get filled up, and to find the best-fitting piece for a particular spot.

This is how the plate goes into the oven. The heating element is embedded in the (heavily isolated) lid. The little black bit on the right on the inside is the temperature sensor, and the box on the right of the oven is the firing computer. Close the lid, create the program, and then just wait until it’s all cooled off enough. With the heavy insulation, even cooling off takes a long, long time!

And this is what greeted us when we opened the oven! Some of the pieces turned out to be too close together so they melted together, making a multi-coloured dot. Some dots got weird shapes because of that too, but that is maybe also a charming effect.