I work at a medium-sized company in the Netherlands and I get about 25 days of vacation per year (I can't recall the exact number). I think it's somewhere in t

I work at a medium-sized company in the Netherlands and I get about 25 days of vacation per year (I can't recall the exact number). I think it's somewhere in the contract that they expect me to take at least two or three consecutive weeks of holiday each year but I generally just announce my longer holidays a couple of weeks in advance and if I can't or don't feel like working for a day I announce it the day before or in the morning of that day (better than calling in 'sick'!). Due to circumstances I hadn't taken a lot of days off the last two years which meant I had quite a few vacation days saved up so I could take about four-and-a-half weeks off last December and January to help my girlfriend who was about to give birth to our second child. There's usually a maximum to the amount of days one can save up over the years and a colleague of mine had to take a couple of weeks off last year otherwise he would lose the days.