Category Archives: Chinese Wife

Chinese Wife, Crazy Germans, Me, Mom in Law, Our cute son

Daily life of an Interracial Couple in Germany

July 10, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 54 Comments

We live now for over 1 1/2 years in Germany and are getting the hang on living here. I should know much about it as I lived here nearly my whole life except those 7 odd years in Finland but it ain’t so. You see both my wife and I adapted to the life in Finland during those years rather well and things are just a bit different here in Germany.

There is for instance the good old Mittagsruhe – Midday Peace which is a quiet time from 1pm till 3pm. You shall make no noise at all during that time. You have some work at home which needs to be done? Tough luck as you will have a horde of furious elderly neighbours massing in front of your door in case they even hear a tiny sound. This might sounds amusing but it is not, not at all. Sure it is a more generational thing these days but we have the luck to have a building full of elderly people here and they can hear pretty well out of nowhere as soon as it is Midday Peace. Also another thing I didn’t know about in Finland is that many restaurants have a Ruhetag – Day of Rest some when within the week, sometimes even two of those days. I wonder how often my wife and I already drove somewhere to eat just to find out that they have their Day of Rest…

Anyhow this is actually not what I wanted to write about but it came to my mind as I just had yesterday again some complaint from a random neighbour due to the midday peace. The topic for today is in fact something like a continuation from my post from January 2015 “Living as an interracial couple in Germany”. Back then I had many things on my mind with people behaving odd with us or also the thing about language. Most of those troubles have subsided over time such as the annoyance with official documents and governmental things as they are done (for now). Also we had no stupid neighbour going through our trash anymore which is rather nice. But there is still something which happens few times a month.

When I take a walk with Nathan around the city people always say how cute he is, especially elderly women are really fond of him. However when we are out together as a family people are looking at us and then whisper something to each other. Often when I am close enough I hear stuff like “She must be here for the Visa”, or “Another Thai around here” or “I wonder if it is even his child”. Now I don’t get upset about it or try to argue with them as it is anyways useless. I never heard such stupid things in Finland, not in the big city there nor in the countryside. Here in Germany I also only heard it in my hometown not in the bigger cities such as Hamburg, Kiel or Cologne. It really seems that people in Germany appear to be more narrow-minded the smaller the city gets. But I must also say this is another generational thing same as the before mentioned “Midday Peace”. I have never heard anything like that from people around my generation, always from one to two generation older than us.

It appears also that the people around here have a very certain stereotype when it comes to WMAF, White Male Asian Female couples. Why? Because more often than not you see older German guys with their younger Asian (in this case nearly always Thai) girlfriends or wives. In fact in our building there is a nice man living together with his Thai girlfriend but she lived here already years before she got together with him. This is also why all peopl assume that my wife is from Thailand. Just few days a guy whom I gave few cents for a bus ticket asked me if my wife is from Thailand. Here again it is nothing I get upset about, nor does my wife care about it any longer but the consistency about those things are something which sticks to my mind. Do I think that life is harder for us due to our interracial relationship? No, not at all but it brings up a lot of more comments from other people around. Sure many of them sound racist (some actually are) but most of these comments are happening because they don’t know any better.

Now that this is of my mind (thank you blog for being my therapy) I can go back and focus on more important things in my life, such as preserving the kitchen from total destruction due to MIL. Oh and by the way, next weeks blog post will be a bit delayed. We will be over the weekend in the beautiful city of Dresden for some sightseeing, eating and visiting a few of my friends.

Do random people start talking about you when you take a walk outside?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Germans, Me, Our cute son

Another Day at a Renaissance Fair

June 19, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 34 Comments

Last year I wrote about the little medieval market we visited during the 888 years celebrations of my hometown. Shortly afterwards I gave you some impressions from a much bigger renaissance fair near our place. Back then I was thinking how great it would be to dress up as well like so many other people were doing it at the big medieval market. Lets just say my wife and I were gathering some stuff since last year and put it into use last month.

mpsh12 — People are slowly arriving at the festival

Back in May just a week after we arrived from China it was time again for the renaissance fair near my hometown. The whole event was going on for three days but we chose to go only on one day (the middle day) as it is pretty tough going around with a little kid such as Nathan in addition to be rather pricey when thinking about the tickets and food there. We immediately regretted that we didn’t go during the first day because the weather changed for the worse. We had all the time sunshine till the day we wanted to go to the fair. The day started without any sunshine, instead it was all grey in grey but on the bright side it was dry. Guess I was too happy too early about having no rain as the first downpour out of many started right after we arrived at the fair.

mpsh11 — Some creatures getting shelter from the first downpour

Even though the weather wasn’t the best the festival area quickly filled up. All over the place they had tents to give shelter from the rain and huge bonfires to get some warmth in case the Met wasn’t enough. Due to the bad weather Nathan was forced to wear a jacket and thus couldn’t present his Chinese Emperor costume to the world. My wife was wearing a Chinese dress she bought in China plus all the accessories and I had created my own personalized clothing since last year. Okay I didn’t made anything myself as I bought most things and my mother actually tailored me few parts as well. I fashioned my costume, as a Lord of the Rings nerd, after the Rangers of Ithilien. Sure it is not authentic but it looks alright in my opinion. As this renaissance fair’s motto is also “Not Authentic but Phantastic” it fits just well. You could see people with real clothes from back in the day but also many Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Pirates and last but not least also a guy wearing a Unicorn dress…

mpsh7 — A little parade around the festival area

I wanted to take so many pictures there this year again of the whole area plus of ourselves but the weather wasn’t on our side. I didn’t want to damage my cameras in the rain thus I ended up with just too few pictures which I took in the rare rainless minutes. Due to the bad weather we also stayed only for a few hours. Right when we wanted to watch the Bruchenball tournament (some kind of rugby game with a 30kg heavy ball…check out this link for some pictures) I spotted huge dark clouds approaching and we hurried back to the car. Just when we arrived some real big storm started to bring hell on earth as huge hailstones threaten to destroy my car. Anyways we arrived safely back home and were happy that I spotted those clouds as it would have been no fun to be in the renaissance fair with that storm.

mpsh1 — Beginning of the Bruchenball Tournament with the last bit of sunshine for that day

For this year we have planned to go to another renaissance fair in September managed by the same organizer. That time it will be in Hamburg and we hope to go there for two days and stay overnight at my cousin’s house who lives just 5 min away by car. The organizer is doing nearly every weekend such festival in different cities all over Germany but we think that going to two of them is more than enough due to our limited free time and of course due to the high costs involved.

Nathan covering his eyes from the strange sun

No sun, I will defend my eyes with this mighty shield

The main artists announcing the beginning of the tournament

Have you dressed up for some event/ did cosplay?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Crazy Germans, Our cute son, Travels

Few Days in Cologne

April 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 64 Comments

This week we had a special little trip to Cologne, better known for Germans under the name Köln. So what brought us down to Middle Germany, the babaric part south of the river Elbe? My wife had some business to attend there so we decided to make a quick three-day holiday in Cologne. As my mother’s birthday was at the same time we invited my parents to come with us (of course we paid everything ). Somehow luck was on our side and I was able to get a good deal for two rooms and two nights at the Hyatt, let’s just say the breakfast is really good at least for people like me and not so special for people like my Chinese wife…

First some background info about Cologne. It is the fourth biggest city in Germany with a bit over 1 million inhabitants. The city has many famous landmarks with the Cologne Cathedral being probably the most well-known. During the Second World War 95% of the city was destroyed and the population had been reduced by over 90%, no wonder it was even called “world’s greatest heap of rubble”. Even though Cologne had been reduced to basically nothing it was rebuild again with reconstruction work lasting until the 1990s. You can check out pictures of how the city looked like after the war on any search engine and it is really amazing how people were able to rebuild it all again.

Our journey started on Tuesday morning but we wouldn’t arrive in Cologne until late afternoon due to terrible weather and several traffic jams. Under normal conditions the drive would usually take roughly five hours but in our case it took more than seven hours, no joy…really. Especially Nathan was a bit odd during that trip as he did not fall asleep at all and was full of energy until the late evening hours. Our hotel was located in a just perfect location as it is just few minutes away by walking from the city center. All you have to do is cross the Hohenzollern Bridge and you are standing right in front of the Cologne Cathedral. The Hohenzollern Bridge itself is one of the landmarks of Cologne and also famous for the thousands of love padlocks placed on the fence between the footpath and the railway lines.

k13 — Cologne Cathedral in the early morning hours

The second day my wife had to be at another hotel already at six AM for her appointment and as it was still dark I walked her there. On my way back to our hotel I took a route through the still empty city center and could take some nice pictures. Later that day we all went once again to the city center and walked by few famous landmarks, the main shopping street and went into the Cologne Cathedral. The Cathedral is just huge, walking around the insides reminded me on the Halls of Moria from Lord of the Rings due to the giant pillars. Visitors can also climb a spiral staircase to a viewing platform at 98m above the ground. I don’t know if it is possible for visitors to climb also the towers which reach up to 157m above ground. Even though we had a wonderful and very filling breakfast we were getting hungry at some point and went to eat at Oma’s Küche (Grandmother’s Kitchen) which is known for its Schnitzel dishes. Though it is very simple food it is still very delicious and more than just filling as the portions are pretty big. In the evening my wife and I went to the Spring Funfair just few minutes away from the hotel. Perhaps you remember one of my blog posts about the funfair at my hometown and how disappointing is was for me to see how small it had become. Well, the funfair in Cologne was so full that it was sometimes impossible to move around. It seems that at least in bigger cities the funfairs are still well visited.

On our last day we left Cologne right after breakfast as we were afraid to be stucked in multiple traffic jams again but to our surprise nothing major happened and we arrived in the afternoon. All in all it was a very nice trip and I recommend going to Cologne in case you are for some time in Germany. We had planned to visit some more places in Cologne such as the Chocolate Museum and other landmarks around the city but the weather was first of all not the best during those days and we just had too little time.