This will be just a short blog post as I am in the middle of craziness which happens when you fly next morning and nothing is ready yet. I always promise myself that I will start the preparation process much earlier the next time but thus far I have failed all my life with it.
The day has been spent by running through the city to buy last presents for the family and all kind of other people we meet there, finishing up MIL’s Visa application (indeed the Chaos Queen is coming again to bring us terror this summer), packing, packing more, running again to city to buy stuff we forgot, packing, bringing the bunnies to my parents apartment, cleaning the fish tanks, packing, taking care that my father has everything with him, filling out papers for the customs, running again to the city, packing, cleaning the apartment and starting to think how on earth we get to the airport next morning.
As you can see it has been a really fun day but now I am also happy that my mother is staying behind in Germany. Now she can take care of our bunnies, feed the fishes and shrimps, refill the tanks, water the flowers and I hope we have a clean apartment again once we return and a filled fridge. For me a holidays never starts till I am in the final stretch to the journey. So this means for our trip that my holiday won’t start till we are sitting in the plane from Helsinki to Xi’an. The flight from Hamburg to Helsinki is still unsettling as we had it before that it was delayed and thus we missed our connecting flight and thus we had to return home after running through the airport for an entire day to try to catch other flights (more about that at some point in the future, even now after so long time I am still very annoyed about that day).
What worries me right now the most is the part where we all get picked up from Xi’an airport by my in-laws. We are three adults plus little Nathan with tons of luggage. To be precise the first four suitcases filled the entire trunk of my parents car (mom will try her best to drive us to the airport, yay and it is really scary). My in-laws don’t have any car and I don’t think that anyone of their friends does have a big enough car…
Oh no, now I am worrying again too much about it and I should actually go to bed instead to get few hours of rest before this upcoming too long day. The only positive thing right now on my mind is the food in China which I have missed for far too long.
When do you start preparing for going to holidays?
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Crazy Chinese Family 
Bon voyage and good luck. And remember, even if your MIL picks you up on a moped, it will make fore a great story.
That story would be just too terrifying!
Have a great trip, CC.
I do tend to pack/plan several days in advance.
I always to do so as well. When I used to travel alone it was working but ever since it is more than just me it does not really works anymore
I’m definitely a last minute packer too…but I must admit I’m a bit concerned about our upcoming trip to Europe this summer. I’ve never packed for a long trip with a baby before, and I’m more than a little worried about ALL THE LUGGAGE. Your car looks stuffed!!!
With a baby it is so much more packing. Unbelievable how much such as small one requires. I think I have half the stuff with us than Nathan 🙂
“Luyou yukuai’ – happy travels. Look forward to reading about your visit to Xi’an.
Thank you, hope to be able to take tons of pictures
Safe travels! I hope everything goes smoothly 🙂
Thank you. really hope that everything will go as intended this time 🙂
Yes!
Alright, China adventures begin anew! You must miss it a bit, right?
But seriously you trust your MIL to take care of pets!
Nah it is not my Mil with the pets but my mother. She is slightly better in that field 🙂
Wonder if we manage to travel somewhere this time in China. My wife mentioned something about a tourist group around the shanghai area
Oh I see, sorry about that mix up. That’s what I get for reading blogs too fast when I’m running late! Haha glad your mom is good in that field
Wouldn’t trust Mil even with our dead hamster 🙂
Wow, sounds very hectic. I hope you will have a nice time in China. Wish you a safe trip 🙂
It was beyond just hectic. Went to sleep at 2 am in the end and woke up at 7. Now waiting at hamburg airport 🙂
Have a lovely holiday.
I hope your family and you will do a spot of travelling in China. Good to hear you are on the mend.
Thank you and I will try my best to bring some nice travel stories back for my blog
It sounds like you’ve got everything planned, Crazy. That does sound and look like a lot of stuff all of you are bringing to China. I suppose quite a bit of the luggage consists of presents for family and friends over there. Wonder if you will have more suitcases when you come back 😀
I am one big planner and like to plan and research my holidays well in advance, even if it’s just a holiday where I take a round trip of my backyard…
I think 80% of our luggage is full of gifts…
Nothing really planned at all but so far this trip went really smooth, no complications at all 🙂
I’m really bad at packing, so I’ll usually postpone it until last minute and then forget half of the stuff I had planned to bring. I’m so happy to hear that you’re on your way to China, and I’m sure it will work out just fine with all your luggage. Have a safe trip and enjoy the food:)
Thank you, as we always pack so late as well we forgot many things once again. At least we are in China now and had already some great lunch and dinner 🙂
Have a great trip and have fun ! Can’t wait to hear your MIL story again 🙂
There will be definitely some stories about MIL. However it is a bit strange as we have been here already an entire day and she did nothing weird yet!
have a great trip!! Can’t wait to hear about your time in Xi’an!!
Thanks, it will be this time actually a bit different as we have a tourist group thing again going for five days around some cities (such as Shanghai and Suzhou :))
if you will be in Shanghai, do tell us!
Haha, we will be actually in Shanghai for 1 1/2 days (25th-26th of April) but I don’t know how much time we even have as we will be with some tourist group powering through several cities with only little rest in between
Have a good trip! I also usually remember about buying gifts the day before leaving, so I normally end up bringing no gifts, haha.
Why do you have so much luggage?? Are you staying for a year?? 😀
The luggage is all filled with many a gift for many a people here 🙂
After sorting out all presents once we arrived the suitcases were not even half full anymore 🙂
It’s been nice reading this, thank you. We go on vacation in June or July when kids here in SoCal are our of school. Have a safe and fun trip.
Thankfully we still don’t have to wait till school holidays as Nathan is still so young. In Germany everything is so much more expensive when traveling during school holiday season 😦
Hmm, maybe now is a good time to import a dose of “crazy” from the MIL, like, for example, do stupid things to mess up the visa application for her to come this summer. You have so many things going on now, perfect excuse to drop the ball! 😀
Too bad that she went yesterday already to Beijing for the application so that boat as sailed for me :p
Will it be your wife, Nathan, and your father going to China? I hope that you will not have any flight delays! I wrote a post about packing, including when to start getting ready… Even if you know you should start earlier, I guess it’s hard to change your ways ^^
Indeed it is Nathan, my wife , father and me traveling. Thankfully we didn’t had any delays and everything went very very smoothly. In fact it went pretty much perfect except that I couldn’t sleep at all on the flight from Finland to China…well I never can but at least there were some interesting movies such as the revenant and the hateful eight 🙂
I’m glad your trip was smooth and that you are now caught up on the latest movies!
Haha yeah, I never really get around watching movies. Last movie I saw was the hobbit!
Have a nice trip and plenty of fun! And eat loads of food. XD You know, to compensate for all the time you didn’t. (I’m kidding, don’t overdo it.)
It is rather hard to hold back on the food as it is just too good. Thankfully my stomach isn’t the biggest anymore so I shouldn’t gain too much within the first two weeks 🙂
I was more worried about health. XD Not weight, haha.
Happy travels!
Thank you, sadly it is raining badly these days and we are on a tour group visiting several cities..