Garden visitors

Since the snow came last tuesday we've had a lot of birds visit our feeder in the backyard. I have a perfect view of all the little (and larger) visitors from the living room window, and I just love hanging on the couch, watching the tiny blue tits, the slightly larger great tits, the (in comparison) enormous wood pidgeons, the squabbling starlings, the occasional robin, and even -as I was just staring absentmindedly out of the window- a great spotted woodpecker!

These little balls of energy and feathers move so fast I only got two good shots out of fourteen!

Contemplating pidgeon...

There's some bread on the table, but apparently quite a bit of snow to plow through before getting there!

With the ruffled feathers, I think this one's a juvenile. It disappeared as soon as the other pidgeon flew away too.

A starling sitting quietly by itself for once.

And this beautiful bird! I think I might have gasped when I saw him...

The past months

It's been song long since I've written here, that I hardly know how to do this anymore. I want to write more about things that inspire me, and make me feel excited about the world, but the first months of this year I couldn't even bring myself to write anything because I thought I was boring, which got me in a spiral of selfloathing, insecurity and even moring boringness.
In february I started my internship at the department of Zoology of my university. I studied the development of the heart in the chick embryo, so most of my days were spent around eggs, trying to inject hearts of not even a millimeter wide, or taking pictures with a scanning electron microscope. I'm actually quite proud of what I accomplished there. Even though my research doesn't mean much for the scientific community or anything, I got to research this amazing and complicated process and take these beautiful pictures.

It was wonderful to see the heart develop from a simple tube, to a four-chambered heart, which is very much like the human heart. If you're interested in understanding the pictures: the first one is made with a scanning electron microscope and shows the heart when it has just looped. You can already see the primitive atrium (A) and primitive ventricle (V) with the atrioventricular canal (AV) and the outflow trackt (OFT).
The second one is a dissected heart of an older embryo, and shows the trabeculated parts of the heart. The trabeculae are the spongy looking parts of the ventricle wall, which make the heart much more firm.
I took the last picture through a light microscope. You can see the four chambers (left and right ventricle and atrium), the outflow trackt and the interventricular septum. And this whole process takes to more than three days!

I also met someone at the zoology department who I've grown to love very much very quickly. His name is Bart, and you'll probably hear more about him from time to time. He makes me very happy.

I do realize that this is not a very coherent story (if it even qualifies as a story) but I hope I'll get used to writing again over time. Please bear with me. This is just a new beginning.

Living in a cloud

This dense fog has been hanging over the Netherlands since Saturday evening... It gives everything a very gloomy feel, but that means I can take some nice and gloomy pictures as well :)

 So now you all know what the view from my bedroom window looks like...

Here are some pictures of trees, because I like trees.

 And at this point my camera started to fog up. I think it has a nice effect though, kind of like snow. This fog has pretty much the same effect as snow too: it's white, cold, everything sounds muffled and can't see much further than five metres in front of you...
Cycling to the neighbouring village for my piano lessons was like cycling into a huge cloud of nothingness.

According to the weather forecast it isn't clearing up anytime soon, so I'm keeping my camera close for the next few days :)

The pictures: Part 2

Here they are! The long awaited second part of my holiday pictures! You can find the first part here! Our next stop was the most beautiful city in the world: Venice! I have to live there someday... The narrow streets, the pretty bridges, the charmingly dilapidated houses, the gondolas... I get all nostalgic when I think back :)

We took the boat from the airport straight to the San Marco square. This is the doge's palace...

...and the San Marco Basilica.

The square was flooded and the water reflected the lights from the buildings while the orchestra under the canopy played romantic music... Venice by night is so magical...

Venice by day isn't too bad either though :)

We visited the San Marco in all it's glory...

...and went inside the Doge's Palace. (no pictures allowed though :( )

You know you're in Venice when you see the winged lions :)

When we had already booked our stay in Venice, I found out we were there with the Festa del Redentore, a feast to celebrate the end of the plague in 1576. There were so many people!

The best part of the celebrations was the fireworks. They went on for almost an hour! They were quite fond of the green/white/red combination :)

 The next day, we went to visit two of the islands: Murano and Burano.

Murano feels more like a village. The island is well known for the glass they make there. In 1291, all the glassmakers in Venice were moved to Murano due to the risk of fires. Now, almost half of the houses there are glass-shops and I bought a really pretty and really tiny glass swan :)

They also had this really cool glass sculpures...

...with a cute little owl :)

 The first thing we saw on Burano was this cute little restaurant with handmade signs :)

It seems to be a rule on Burano that no two houses can have the same colour. I only saw two white ones! All the colours make everything feel so happy :)

We sat here for a while to recover from the colourshock and look out over the lagoon...

 After a while we had to go back to the boat to Venice  to find some food, but not after a very long detour across the whole island :)

You can't really get anywhere on the island with a car, so the ambulance has to be a boat! You can also see the police (carabinieri) station  in the back.

We also met this sweet little cat!

He yawned every time I tickled him on a particular spot on his chin :)

And he was very very cuddly and sweet :)

 This tower was leaning so bad...

...it needed a strong guy to push it back straight! Of course he only needs one hand ;)

This little extension looked so dreamy in the sky! I would have loved to just sit there for a while...

I felt really sad our last day in Venice had come so soon... To ease the pain we took a traghetto (a gondola that takes you from one side of the Canal Grande to the other) which costs one euro if you look cute and smile a lot and two euros if you don't :P

We said our last goodbyes to the winged lion...

...and to the pigeons on the pink lanterns...

 ...and off we went...

Here's just one more picture of my sweetest guy :)

And a gif of me eating a cookie :) I didn't steal his, we had two ;) Also: I crumble a lot and I get distracted very easily...

Reminiscing makes me feel nostalgic... But I'm working on a new bag design which I'm very excited about! I'll keep you posted :)