Category Archives: Crazy Euopean People

Medieval Market

May 3, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 28 Comments

This year my hometown is celebrating its 888 year anniversary. Not bad for such a boring little town right? One might think many events are planned but sadly this is not reality due to the tight financial situation here. During the 875 anniversary the city still used up around 150.000 Euros for all kinds of things and for this year onyl about 46.000 Euros, quite a downgrade I would say. Any who they still managed to start something new and this was the Historical Market in April.

Here in Germany we have Medieval Markets in several cities. Those are some bigger events filled with all kinds of wonders. For example there is one big market in a town nearby every early summer and it does really attract a lot of people. This market is located in a park and it is full with medieval food vendors, knights, gleemen, music and and and. So I was rather sceptical when I heard they had this also planned for my hometown in the city center. To be precise it was to be held in the old market square next to the Vicelin Church from 1834. At least the location was not that bad as there are some historical buildings around but I knew it wouldn’t reach the authentic feeling as the Medieval Market in the other town in the middle of a park.

This event had a rather bad timing as the weekend it was running we had on the first day a rainstorm and on the second day very cold wind with some little rain here and there. I think you can imagine that the market was rather empty as it was really not an inviting weather to go outside your home. As my wife was down with a flu those days she stayed home and I went together with my parents, Nathan and MIL. Yes, dear Chinese mother-in-law was coming with because she really needed to get out of the apartment as in the beginning she spent most of the time indoor doing nothing but cooking, spreading her oily handprints around the apartment and playing with Nathan.

So we went out facing the cold wind and some rain in the hope to find some joy at the market. To our surprise it was not completely empty and there were few things going on such as a gleemen juggling torches, “music from the middle ages” on another stage and a lot of food and handmade products all around. Nathan surely had a lot to take in as he was facing rather dumbfounded around with his little mouth open. Though we were not really hungry we still bought some fresh bread from one of the food stalls which was still warm and it helped to fight off the cold for a while.

Even though this market was still worlds away from the ones I have been visiting during the past years in Germany it was still nice to have one here in this little town. Next month there will be once again the big Medieval market in the nearby town and I will definitely visit it with Nathan, my wife and dear mother-in-law to show them how wonderful it can be. There is just so much to discover on such a big market and lets see what kind of useless stuff I might buy for myself or for Nathan (perhaps chainmail for him?). And now many many pictures for you, I just couldn’t decide which ones to upload so I chose them all!

sadly Nathan is still too young for this

Have you ever visited such an Medieval Marekt or something similar?

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Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

Our other little Babies

April 29, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 28 Comments

It seems that I am currently in an animal mood when it comes to articles however this one had been prepared already many months ago but I never got around to publish it.

CIMG3313 — So fluffy that you can’t even see the eyes!

Every now and then I mentioned bunnies in my posts but never showed them except once when I once again wrote about MIL. The fact that I didn’t show them before is not because they are so incredible ugly but due to the fact I had always so many other things to write about. However just the other day my wife asked me why I never wrote about our older babies and I decided to honor them with an own article.

During our trip to China in the summer of 2011 my wife really wanted to have some pets after seeing so many fury animals and friends and pets stores. Thus I decided to do some research and came up with the idea to get my wife a bunny. But as everyone (should) know is that you should never keep a bunny alone so we had to buy two little fur balls. After checking the local bunny breeders I quickly found one 160km away who still had two bunny babies left to be sold. The very next day we got into our car and drove to take a look at those bunnies and perhaps even buy them.

Needles to say my wife loved them right away even though she prefered back then white bunnies. After having a short introduction into the family tree of these bunnies we bought them and took them back home where we had already a cage prepared in our balcony. After short time both little bunnies didn’t stay so little anymore but doubled their weight and now we have two monsters each having a weight of about 2kg.

In Finland they had their little cage on our balcony and during last summer they stayed for three months in my parents cottage where my dad had built them a little outdoor cage. To my father’s displeasure they were pretty fond of digging holes and ruining the garden he had taken care of for so many years. Now here in Germany they got a new little home in our balcony but this time on two layers so they can avoid each other a bit better than before. Of course it is far away from the space they would need but we try our best to bring them sometimes down to my parents balcony to run around as that one is just huge. For my wife the worst part is that she is allergic to bunnies!

As there are currently many things going on in my life I will probably throw some older prepared blog posts at you rather than current new stories. I hope everything will be settled soon but you never know what the next day got prepared for you.

How do you like our other little babies?

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Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Germans

Visit at the Animal Apartment

April 26, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 31 Comments

Last week we visited my old friend from high school. Back then we had one thing in common: Fishes! We both had several aquaria with a multitude of fishes. However contact ended after he changed schools and we didn’t hear about each other for 15 years. Then last year he found me on Facebook (seems like social media can be useful at times) and we started chatting again. Last weekend we decided that we should visit him and his fiancée as they had something very special in their apartment.

You see his love for animals never ended so from fishes he got to spiders, lizards, snakes you name it and his fiancée got a love for degus. So when we visited them their apartment resembled more a zoo shop than a place to live in. With most of their animals they actually do selective breeding and resell them. I do not know how lucrative this is but it at least covers all the costs as some of the more special geckos actually sell for several hundred Euros!

When we went down their cellar/ super animal room Nathan went all nuts. He just ran in circles, checking out each enclosure and making his high-pitched happy sound. It was really amazing to see how happy he got once we entered this room, I mean he could not even see any animals from his viewpoint but he smelled, heard and somehow sensed them I guess. We tried our luck to take pictures of him touching a snake but he wasn’t up for it. For some reason he was shy when the snake was presented, well too bad…

Upstairs my friend and his fiance had also few enclosure including one with African pygmy hedgehogs. I don’t have any pictures of them but if you just google them you can make see that those are incredible cute! Basically they have all kinds of animals such as corn snakes, crested geckos, mice, rats, degus, chameleons, tarantulas, turtles, fishes, shrimps and last but not least a pug. Yes a pug, didn’t really fit into their collection but the dog was really fond of Nathan and Nathan was fond of squeezing that poor little thing.