Category Archives: Crazy Chinese People

Holidays in Finland Part II

Here we go now with the second part of our holidays in Finland. Today the blog post will be a bit different, similar to the article Nathan’s World from 2014. We had a great time at  grandparents cottage for the first 1 1/2 weeks but it was time to leave and travel to Helsinki for another four days before returning back home.The trip started too early for me, my mom woke me up so early that it was still dark outside! I can’t remember really what all happened but suddenly granny kissed me and said goodbye. Before I could do anything I was in grandpa’s car and we were driving somewhere. As always I fell asleep in the car and woke up in some weird town where we took a bus. Dad mentioned something about “This is so cheap, cheaper for all of us than a single train ticket!”. I don’t know how cheap that is but I was certainly not comfy in that bus. It was soo full of tall people and the bus driver was making weird Finnish jokes over the microphone all the time. At least I was able to sleep a bit more and when I woke up, guess what, yeah another city again. What a strange thing, seems like each time I sleep these days I wake up somewhere else. My parents talked about this strange place called Helsinki, can’t remember that I was ever here before though.

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There are really many people in this Helsinki

From this strange Helsinki place we went by bus to another strange Espoo place. There some Chinese man waited for us at the bus station and helped my parents to carry some stuff. We all went to an apartment and it was full of people and even a little princess! All the people were talking non-stop so I went to play a bit hide and seek with the little princess, what fun that was. It got even better when daddy finally had the airbed ready for some non-stop jumping action with the princes. This “bum bum 跳跳 (Tiao Tiao)” is soo much fun, can’t understand why my parents looked so annoyed. Anyways at some point I was forced to go to sleep again but at least when I woke up I was still at that great place with the airbed.

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Me and the princess

After getting some breakfast from Chinese crazy granny we took once agin a bus back to this Helsinki place. My parents surely surprised me when we went to this wonderful theme park called Linnanmäki. Wow it was so much fun there and it seemed my parents didn’t even use any of this strange money thing. Still don’t understand this money, they need it for everything but always complain that they don’t have enough. Crazy Chinese granny was doing stupid stuff again and I nearly had to throw up after being in a ride with her as she was spinning this wheel all the time. Mommy was kind of angry with granny later but it seems that granny didn’t do anything wrong and that it was actually mommy’s fault, I don’t really understand granny sometimes. The food at the theme park was wonderful, so many french fries and ketchup! We should eat there more often. Later daddy went away to meet with uncle Tatu and some other friends and he only returned shortly before I was going to sleep, they must have a lot to talk about.

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Crazy granny is scary

Next day I woke still up at this place, are we staying here forever? We all went again to strange Helsinki and went to a place full of Moomin stuff! Wow, so many Moomins everywhere but suddenly we left and I didn’t get anything, bad people. A bit later we were at some place eating Chinese food, it just tasted like China, we should come back here more often.  Afer this we were in some kind of park and there were so many children. Even the police was there and I think my parents tried to get my arrested as they always wanted to put me on some police motorcycle, good that I fought against it, I am too young for the prison. Daddy called this Lasten Festarit at Töölönlahti, no idea what that is but it was fun. Mommy showed me some kids who were doing kicks and said that I would do this Tae Kwon Do as well soon, looks certainly interesting I just hope they have french fries as well there. There was so much to do together with the little princess, jumping, running, singing, eating lollipops but somehow the old people looked so tired, what a lazy bunch. We left the park and crazy granny pointed out some sea gulls but daddy said that it was actually a swam, don’t know what is true.

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The sea gull/ swan

We left those nice people and went together with mommy, daddy and crazy granny to some restaurant were other people were waiting for us. Guess what there were two other little princesses and we had so much fun running around, unplugging some lights and having crazy granny running after us all the time. I don’t know when we got back to the airbed place but I woke there up again later. Something was wrong as it was too early again and we took a big car called taxi where we put all our stuff and drove to Helsinki again. There we took this great train and shortly after that we were again at the airport where I had been few times before. Crazy granny was doing crazy things at the security control again, she is just so funny but the security staff didn’t seem to like her funny stuff. Anyways it seemed that the great fun in Finland was over because later we arrived in Hamburg again and took once again a bus, I am getting sick of these buses…

How do you like bus trips?

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At the Guangyun Lake

We have been in Xi’an multiple times over the past years but somehow each time we find something new which we haven’t visited yet. One of those things was this time the site of the Xi’an International Horticultural Exposition 2011. Back then  in 2011 we were also in China together with my parents and even had tickets for the Expo. However it was so hot during that time that we decided to skip it. Years passed by and we forgot about the expo and the still existing park. This all changed when my wife’s friend invited us to go there for the afternoon. I was ready for some intense walking around the huge area and taking tons of pictures. Yes I was ready but it all didn’t work out as I had hoped for.

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Some of the wonderful flowers

Before we went to that huge park we were invited by the whole crazy family to go eating some buffet at the Shangri-La Hotel in Xi’an. Don’t understand me wrong it was pretty decent food there but nothing too extraordinary that I would write about it. Only three things are really worth mentioning from that time at the buffet. First my crazy Chinese mother-in-law was chasing behind Nathan to feed him around the playground next to the restaurant for several rounds. Not only once but multiple time. Second crazy Chinese Grandma ate two plates full of raw seafood. She never ate raw seafood before in her entire life and ended up few hours later very very sick at home. Third was a family with two children sitting next to us. The mother was one of the bit larger people out there, not that it would be worth mentioning at all but she had a very interesting taste in food. Each time she went to get some more sushi she took a tube of wasabi and ate it all, again and again and again. Okay that is all I have to mention about the buffet except of course that it took nearly three hours as all family members needed few breaks in order to eat as much as humanly possible. Due to this our trip to the Expo Site was delayed a lot.

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I couldn’t figure out how to reach that hut

My wife’s friend picked us up from the hotel a little after 3pm. With her she had her husband, baby, mother-in-law and nanny because you know it takes at least four people to handle a child in China. Once we arrived at the Expo we quickly realized that it would be impossible for us to cover the whole area as it was first of all too late and the area just too huge. We got ourselves tickets for the electrical mini busses driving through the main area. The bad thing was though that those busses only operated till 5pm meaning we had less than 1 1/2 hours time to cover at least a couple of things before leaving. While driving around you could see that they still put up a lot of effort to preserve the park however many sights were already closed and were slowly crumbling apart.

Our first stop was at a giant hall full of tropical and desert plants. The building was divided of course into two sections where the lower part was for the tropical plants and the upper area for the desert plants. It was very well made and I was surprised how on earth they got those giant trees there. Especially the rainforest part was interesting as it had all kinds of beautiful flowers around. Here I wanted to take many more pictures but the high humidity wasn’t the best friend of my camera lenses…

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Look at me!

After this we went to the animal section. I must say it was very sad to see how the animals were kept and I did not even take pictures of it. All in all it just looked terrible. The only part of the animals section where I took pictures was the peacock enclosure. It was full of male peacocks and upon entering the staff gave us dried corn to feed the birds. Those peacocks certainly went crazy showing off and we were surrounded by an ocean of colourful feathers. In fact there were so many that my wife got scared, okay she gets scared by all animals when they get too close…

Sad to say but those were the only two locations we managed to visit. While driving around the park we saw so many locations with certain themes such as European Village, Chinese Monuments etc. All over the park they had those Wedding Photoshoots and their staff carrying tons of different dresses around. We also saw the Chang’an Tower(长安塔) which is one of the main sights of the park. However we could not enter it due to one important reason, it never passed the safety test and thus was and perhaps will never be opened to the public…

Have you visited a similar Expo before?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

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Three Months of Madness

Dear crazy mother-in-law is back again. That sentence alone is already enough for a whole blog post as it sits heavy. Last time she was here for three months was last year when she came here in the middle of April. Oh how happy I was when those three months with her were over and yet here I am once again and hear her voice somewhere in the apartment.

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#Nathancuty doesn’t know yet what evil has come

Yesterday evening we went for the Hamburg Airport to pick her up. Surprisingly nothing weird happened there. She did not try to force her way past the security checks no nothing. I was actually kind of shocked that she was not coming out with a police escort or similar, perhaps there is still hope for her. As it was already late when we got home there was not much time for her to pull of any crazy stunts. She only  fixed herself some dinner and then went to sleep. Sounds alright except of her standard snoring. You know I wrote about it already somewhere but a starting plane is a joke compared to her snoring. In Suzhou I was able to hear her snoring through the wall as she had a room next to ours!

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Why is this happening to me?

Today it also was eerily quiet with her. She prepared us lunch and nothing broke. I am wondering if it is really her and not some kind of cyborg. Okay she could not do any harm yet as I was closely watching that the kitchen would survive at least the first day. I even bought several sets of new kitchen rags which I will secretly exchange over the next three months, no need for disgusting kitchen rags which are so dirty that they might develop some life form suddenly. Nothing broken yet, sounds kinda boring don’t you think? Well she managed one thing today as we went to the lake nearby to dip our feet in the water. She was holding Nathan and went deeper and deeper in the lake until the poor little thing did not only had his diapers soaked with water but his shirt as well, thank you MIL.

What crazy stuff will my mother-in-law pull off this time?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/