Today we drove once again to Hamburg but this time not because of another visit at the Zoo but for our little boy’s baptism. We chose a little church in Hamburg because I was myself baptized in that church nearly 27 years ago. Back in the day my parents decided on that church because it is the Finnish Seamen’s Church and I am myself 1/2 Finn and 1/2 German. Now that our little son was born we thought it was just right that he would be baptized in the very same church as me and besides he is also to part Finnish!
The Church
The church was built at Ditmar-Koel-Strasse 6 in 1966, in the same street are also the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Seamen Churches (sorry if I forgot other churches but I never paid too much attention which other ones are located there).
It is a pretty small church in the corner of few other buildings so some people even miss it passing by. Within is a small coffee shop where you can buy all kinds of Finnish little items and food stuff. I have to add that the prices are not even that high, sure higher than normal food etc in Germany but still mostly cheaper than in Finland itself. One of my favorite parts in the church building is the parrot named Tseki which is probably just a “Finnishnized” version of Jacky. One of the things you don’t expect in your everyday church is most likely the sauna…
Our day at the church
The main ceremony at the church started at 11am and the church was packed (okay, it is a really small church and we weren’t more than 30 people in there…). Besides the main church service there were two baptisms on the program, one for a young boy (he had surely a lot of family with him) and one for our little baby. I don’t have much to say about the whole event as it was in my eyes a standard Lutheran (Finnish) church service but for my mother-in-law it was something new as she his herself catholic and besides that only witnessed church services in China. Everything was going on without any issues, little Nathan slept throughout the whole service and the only sound he managed to produce was a little fart…
After the service was done we left the church and went to the coffee shop in the same building. My parents had a little cold bread table ordered so we had time to relax a bit with coffee/tea, bread, pulla and some muffins. It probably does not sound like a very exciting day but we liked it as we prefer to keep things simple and it was an excellent way to get body and mind away from the ever going on renovation work in our apartment. Besides, it was very nice that everything went so smooth this day as we had some little drama the two weeks prior to the baptism as one of the papers necessary for the process was missing. Not any paper but the BIRTH CERTIFICATE itself vanished somehow so we had to get some certified paper from the Finnish resident registration office asap to Germany which was not as easy as it sounds now but in the end we managed everything just fine and the pastor received all necessary documents couple of days before the deadline.
Some information about the Finnish Seamen’s Mission on wiki and the website of the church itself in Finnish language…
Crazy Chinese Family 
Congrats to Nathan on his baptism! I know a lot of babies get baptized around this time in Canada as well (in accordance with Easter)! Your bundle of joy is very cute, especially in the first picture – a framer for sure!
It was pretty hard for us to get an appointment for the baptism done at all due to our very short trip to Germany, so getting it done on Easterm was just perfect 🙂
Congrats to Nathan! Thanks for sharing about his baptism, it’s something I’m not too familiar with. From the sounds of it, it seems like a low-key ceremony and glad everything went off without a hitch. It doesn’t seem like a ceremony where you’d invite a ton of family and friends, though, just the closest ones (I could be entirely wrong, but rarely do I hear people talking about baptisms as a significant life event, which I’m sure in a way it is). Hope all is going well with the renovations and your new family home is coming together nicely.
Thank you 🙂
I believe it always depends on the family whether to invite many people or to keep it very simple.
Sure, in a way the baptism is important,in Finland many families dont even tell other people the name of their child untill it had the baptism. Furthermore with a baptism the child can participate in the “confirmation” when he/she is about 14, after that the person is allowed to become a godparent. Now we have one godfather for Nathan from Finland, one of my good friends, and many unofficial godparents from China (unofficial because it is not due to religion but out of normal friendship)
Thanks for the explanation. It is great to see your family carry on the tradition of baptism, and for sharing it with us too. Welcome the godfathers – and unofficial ones – to your family. They sound like very nice friends that they will shower Nathan with love and gifts for a long time to come 🙂
Congrats to Nathan 😀 The photos are great, seems like you and your family had a great day~ My family (including uncle and aunts) also had very “simple” baptisms for my cousins and my younger siblings 🙂 Actually my mum said the other day that now she’s just waiting for me to get pregnant so she can plan the whole “party” afterwards, while I told her that I prefer the “low key” parties 😛 haha..
That little guy will become something in this life. I see it 🙂
He better becomes something great or I will have always something to complain about him in later years: “But CrazyguyinTailand said 30 years ago that you would become something in this life!”
Hahahah with such a smart father what can possibly go wrong 😛
Awesome blog
I came across via Madh Mama’s guest post on your love story.
It is nice to read a man’s perspective on his in-laws 🙂
I was just wondering if your MIL knows that she is quite famous with the bloggers since you have dedicated maximum posts on her 🙂
I think she can guess that I must have some kind of blog and it would not even surprise me that she might have some weirdo micro blog account writing about her crazy son-in-law. There are just so many things to write about and I try to minimize it already to really strange things but this is also hard because most things are usually too strange to be true what she is doing..
Hehehe, you must be the famous SIL on her blog 🙂
Oh and of course it is great that you found your way from the interview to my blog 🙂
I realized that there are not too many male bloggers around when it comes to all this topic about family and relationship
Read almost all your posts 🙂
Keep up the good work
Thank you, it is also interesting for me to write these things down and see after some time how life has changed 🙂