Chinese Wife, Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Travels

A Weekend in Sotkamo

November 29, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 35 Comments

Back in 2011 we visited my wife’s friends in Sotkamo which is in the in the middle east of Finland. From Helsinki Sotkamo is about 580km away by car which means that it takes over 6 1/2 h to get there. So why my wife has friends in the middle of nowhere of Finland? In 2006 my wife started her studies in Finland. She didn’t study in Helsinki in the beginning but in Kajaani which is roughly 30km to the west of Sotkamo. She stayed there for one year until she found another university and moved to Helsinki. During that one year she made many new friends and one of them she still considers to be her best friend and that is the one we visited back then.

We went there in December which means that there is snow, too much snow all around and it is cold, too cold! We left our home near Helsinki at 6am in order to arrive at a reasonable time in Sotkamo for lunch. During those morning hours we had about -16 degrees (Celsius ~ 3 degrees Fahrenheit) which was already a challenge for my poor Diesel powered Opel Astra. Nonetheless the car managed somehow however during the drive to Sotkamo the temperatures plummeted sometimes down to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit). Let me just say that in never got warm inside the car and even the car engine decided not get warm and thus many other things didn’t work such as the Turbo…(really great when the car has suddenly troubles to get up a small hill!).

It was also during that trip that we had our first (and only) car crash. The whole mess happened towards the final 100km of the journey and wasn’t fun at all. You have to imagine having a road covered in a layer own snow which is compressed and thus nearly like ice at such low temperatures. Somehow I got with my right front tire too much to the right where the snow layer was higher and then everything happened rather quick. At over 80km/h (~50 mp/h) the car started spinning around crashing on the opposite lane into the fields just barely missing an oncoming truck. I don’t know how but nothing happened to us or the car! Some driver who saw everything came to our aid and managed to call on some farmer who pulled us out of the field with his tractor for very little money. I will never forget the feeling when I lost control over the car and saw during the spinning motion the truck coming closer and closer.

snow4 — Getting ready for some cross-country skiing failure

With some delay we managed it finally to Sotkamo where we had our lunch at the friend’s restaurant. Compared to Helsinki Sotkamo was already entirely in the Christmas season with too much snow all around. The little town is known for its skiing resort Vuokatti. It was there I tried my luck to teach my wife how to do cross-country skiing but it didn’t work out so well. In fact my wife gave up after a while so I decided to do a short 2.5 km round but got lost somehow and had to do a 15km round. The skiing center in Vuokatti is very famous in Finland as it offers a variety of possible activities such as downhill skiing, cross-country, ski jumping and there is also a cross-country skiing tunnel which makes training on snow possible during summer time. Though it offers so many sport activties we spent the least time doing any kind of sporty stuff there. My wife had more important things to do with her friends such as talking, eating, watching movies, eating and eating. As said before one of her friends got back then a Chinese restaurant in the town resulting that there was always more than enough food.

As Sotkamo is very small with only 10.000 inhabitants there is also not much to do within the city center. There are some shops around but that’s about it. During winter it is a perfect place for winter sport enthusiasts and in summer time it offers great hiking trails. What makes this place also interesting is that it is not that far away from the Arctic Circle and Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi where my wife visited once with her friends in 2009 but that is again stuff for another time.

What a historic moment for my good old car back then

Sotkamo Church hidden behind snow and tress

Have you visited a place with more than enough snow to get already annoying for you?

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Award

The Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award

November 22, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 25 Comments

You might have noticed that lately I am not that active in blogging anymore due to my health issues. Most posts I had during the entire summer and early autumn were in fact the ones I had already prepared beforehand and only needed little editing. It is not that I am out of ideas now just that I don’t get into writing them down due to very little time at my computer. So it was very surprising and honoring when I had been nominated as a honary sister for the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award by Betty from Betty has a Panda.

She included in her nomination the favorite post of the people she in turn nominated. This means of course that I will also add my favorite post from her blog which is strikingly similar to the one she selected as her favorite from my blog “A method to strengthen your immune system from early on”

I guess it is time to answer the questions.

1.Why do you blog?

I can’t really answer this as I do not really know it myself. It all started back in 2013 just after my in-laws flew back to China as they had spent more than a month with us in Finland. My brain had to deal with so many oddities committed by my in-laws that I suddenly had the urge to share them with the rest of the world. I never expected to go on so long as I thought in the beginning that I will be done with writing those stories down within few months. Who would have thought that especially my crazy Chinese mother-in-law is never stopping to do weird things and thus there will be still many stories to share. I guess it is very similar for me as with Betty as this is some kind of therapy!

2. What is your favorite post from your blog and why?

My favorite post is Our Story: “How we met”. I had this post planned for a long time but it never felt right when I started writing it so it got postponed by nearly an entire year. Sitting down and thinking on how everything started was a very nice experience as I kind of relived everything again. Now over a year later it is still enjoyable to read the whole blog post again.

3. What are your favorite topics to write about?

I guess you now it already, of course MIL’s insanities! Besides that I also enjoy writing about the few travels we do as I get a chance to look at those pictures again and think back how it was there. Since this year I also added few post about cooking but sadly I didn’t get around this topic anymore for the past six months or so. I do hope to get back to it starting next year but lets see.

4. What inspires you to write your blog posts?

As said already in the previous post it is all thanks to my mother-in-law and the rest of the Chinese family. There are just so many things I experienced over the years that I needed some kind of outlet which became this blog in the end. Each story regarding my Chinese family has a lot of “back story”. I realize this only when I start writing as I suddenly see that there is so much more about the whole thing to add/ write more posts so yeah, it is very inspiring.

5. What is your favorite animals and why?

I don’t know. I guess I like pretty much all animals but I don’t have any favorite. I like dogs, cats, bunnies, even shrimps and fishes but I can’t say what my most favorite is from all of them. Right now we have two bunnies and several fishes. However I can say that I really dislike snails…

6. What is the craziest thing ever happened to you?

My Chinese mother-in-law…really I am not kidding. There are of course many other things which happened to me over the past years such as having a car crash together with my wife on an icy road without getting hurt at all or even damaging the car but nothing compares to the craziness MIL has brought to my life. There are so many occasions with her that I wonder how it is even possible. For example who on earth would challenge the security guards at the airport or destroy half of our apartment and say it wasn’t her fault?

7. What is your favorite childhood memory?

When my parents took me for the first time to our cottage in Finland when I was around 5-6 years old.

8. What do you like to spend your free time with?

Playing computer games, editing videos and pictures and of course reading nice books.

9. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Hopefully healthy! Besides that I see myself with my great family and perhaps with a little brother or sister for Nathan (me hopes for a brother while my wife wants the opposite…). I doubt that MIL wil stop doing stupid things so the blog should be also still going strong in five years.

10. If you could meet other bloggers you like in person, what would you talk with them about?

This is a hard one as it pretty much depends on the blogger. With some it might be about their experiences with Chinese families, with others about their favorite travel destinations, then some food topics or about being an author.

Who to nominate?

This is not so easy as I just saw that nearly every blogger I follow has been nominated already! I will just nominate a handful and hope that not all of them have been nominated before.

Kiwi in Korea with Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival

Sue’s Fabulous Travels by Sue with The Amazing Terracotta Warriors

The Fourth Continent by Tanny with Travel Greenland on a shoestring budget

Marta lives in China by Marta with Chinese Fashion: 10 Epic Fails

My 10 Questions:

How did you get into blogging?
What is your own favorite blog post?
Did you learn on other blogs something which helped you later?
What inspires you to write blog posts?
Have you ever been asked about your blog by family or friends?
Are you able to blog on a regular basis?
Which country you want to visit?
How did you come up with the name of your blog?
What are your favorite books?
What tips you have for other bloggers?

Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Travels

Going around Helsinki

November 15, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 32 Comments

I just recently realized that I have no blog post about Helsinki and what you can visit there at all! I mean I got Xi’an covered, Stockholm, Tallinn and also several North German cities but nothing about Helsinki, the city I lived for so many years. Thankfully I did not forget yet everything so I will give you a small impression on what you can visit there within a day. All pictures were shot few days before our wedding going around the city with my in-laws and also few days after the wedding taking some friends around.

First of all some info about the city. Helsinki is the capital city of Finland with a population of about 625 thousand. That might seem pretty small but you have to think that the entire nation only got a bit over 5 million inhabitants so it ain’t that bad suddenly anymore. Finland has been for many years under the rule of Sweden and later under the rule of the Russian Empire. Only after 1917 Finland got its independency. It was under the Russian rule that Helsinki became the capital city of Finland and in the city center are many neoclassical buildings. In fact it happens often that tv shows or movies are using the city center of Helsinki not in order to have Helsinki itself as the setting but St. Petersburg! But more about that you shall see in some pictures.

One main thing to visit in the city is the Helsinki Cathedral. It has been built from 1830-1852 and was known until the Finnish independency as St. Nicholas Church (Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas the First of Russia). it is not an incredible big cathedral but it has a very interesting design and interior decorations. Standing in front of the cathedral you have a wonderful view towards the Senate Square and can even see a bit of the South harbour. Passing by the Senate Square is the street Aleksanterinkatu which is a shopping street where you can find pretty much everything, there is also Stockmann located, a big department store. The street is also very interesting as it is heated during winter time and thus there is no snow. A short distance away is Temppeliaukio Church which is famous for its design. It was built 1969 into solid rock and is known due to this fact also as the Rock Church. Due to its design and the rock walls it has excellent acoustics and is often used for small performances.

From the Helsinki harbour you can take a ferry to Suomenlinna, an old sea fortress which is also a UNESCO World heritage site. The island is inhabited by some 900 people and all around are the old remains of the fortress including huge cannons. It is also a very popular place to go for Finnish people to enjoy the rare summer days to have some BBQ and go swimming in the ocean. At Suomenlinna is also the last surviving Finnish submarine Vesikko. From the Helsinki harbour you can take also another ferry to the Helsinki Zoo Korkeasaari. The ferry used to be the only means of getting there however these days there is also a bridge leading to the zoo (only by walking though!). It is a small but nice zoo with animals from around the world. There is also an Africa and a South America House with small animals running partly freely around there.

All these places you can pretty much visit within a day. Of course there are also many other places you should visit as well. The best way to get a good look around is to take one of the sightseeing buses or taking Tram Line 2 and 3 as they go pretty much around all major sightseeing spots. As you might have seen I did not include much of the city center here such as the museums, the famous Railway Station, the city hall or the Parliament House. These are all places you can easily visit by walking around the city center as they are just minutes away from each other by walking. To my shame I must admit I do not have any pictures of them and thus didn’t include them now in this short tour.