Category Archives: Crazy Euopean People

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

Our Wedding in Finland

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In one of the previous articles I wrote about our wedding in China and how I experienced it. Now it is time to present you our wedding in Finland!

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Last summer we had first a “little” wedding in China which was pretty much stressful experience but also at the same time very interesting. About three weeks later we had our wedding in Finland which had been planned for nearly a year by my wife. However unlike in China, we had instead of 100 guests only 50 but at least we knew each single person there! Besides it would have exceeded our financial limits to invite anybody more as Finland is not exactly known to be a cheap country.

Our guests included of course both of our parents and much of my family from Finland and Sweden. In addition my brother was flown in with his girlfriend from Germany. The tricky part was to invite our friends as we had only limited capacities which meant we couldn’t just invite everybody we know but had to be very selective. My wife invited some of her friends she knew for years in Finland and also several friends from her work place. I on the other hand invited several dudes from my swimming years in Finland, one guy from my old swimming team in Germany and last but not least my best friend from my youth who extra came from California for this event.

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The couple of days prior to the wedding were more than just stressful. The location of the wedding reception had to be prepared, people had to be picked up from the airport and delivered at the hotel and of course my wife and I still had yet to start practicing our wedding dance! The night before the wedding we also met at the hotel with some of the guests to have a DIY dinner consisting of potatoe salad, sausages and jiaozi 饺子. This dinner allowed us also to get some dancing practicedone  as my uncle from Sweden used to be a dancer. Not that we practiced alot but at least we learned the basic steps.

Things became even crazier on the wedding day itself. It started very early in the morning, I had to pick up one bridesmaid from Helsinki city center so she could help prepare my wife with hairs, make-up and her dress. My own preparations were a bit less exiting as there is not much to do except to suit up and put the hairs into a less messy state. However there was still much to do at the wedding reception because one of our guests changed plans and would not come, my wife had to invite somebody else and my task was to come up with a new seating arrangement + getting the technic to work for the picture screening. This meant I drove very often between our home and the wedding reception, building up more and more stress as time was running out. I do not know how but in the end we managed to be in time at the church. I believe this included several speeding violations on my behalf.

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Already one year before the wedding we were trying to find the perfect church for us and booked it in advance together with the wedding reception in a manor house near our home (they only had two weekends still free for us at that point, one year before!). Thankfully nothing out of the ordinary happened at the church, not even a crying baby! Our pastor was holding the ceremony in Finnish and in English and in the end we received also a bible in those languages from her.

Once we arrived at the wedding reception it was time for some photo shooting, relaxing in the sun and welcoming all the guests before entering the premises. One of my wife’s bridesmaids was the MC doing everything in English, then another bridesmaid was translating everything into Finnish and one of my groomsmen was translating into German and Chinese, hence we had all needed languages covered. Thanks to the MC there was always something going on which resulted that no one was getting bored. She had prepared a full program for that day and it was planned in a way that it allowed much free time between the sections for the guest to get some rest, mingle and pick up few drinks from our car. We had a lot of games, very good food and a wedding dance which was okay for practicing only 15 min before. The celebrations lasted well into the night and in the end we could get our well-deserved rest in the hotel at the manor house. All in all I can say it was a great day, sure it was exhausting but it went very well and thus was a nice experience.

 

Here are some more pictures from that day. I will still try to find a picture from our invitation cards which we had purchased before from China.

 

 

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

Hagenbeck Zoo

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Some basics

Its been now over a week that we have been in Germany. I barely had time to read through other great blogs or to even make some drafts for new articles. The past week has been busy with renovation work such as carrying a lot of the previous owner’s furniture out, cleaning the roof in the apartment due to 40 years of smoking inside, ripping the wallpapers of and tiles from the kitchen and bathroom. All this does not appear to be that much but it was each day 12 hours of work. And believe it or not, mother-in-law was helping us pretty much with the wallpapers!

The Zoo

Even though we were so busy we had time to visit Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg. It is a pretty famous Zoo which started out 1863 and was officially founded in 1907, furthermore those open enclosures for animals which are often used now were “developed” there. The park is also pretty big for a Zoo which is nowadays within the borders of a big city. It spans over 25 hectares (~62 Acres) with all kinds of animals from around the world. On the premises itself many animals such as peacocks, chickens and the Patagonian mara are running around freely so in some lucky cases you can even touch them.

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Besides the main Zoo there is also the Tropical-Aquarium however we were not able to go there as it took us already nearly 6 hours to go around the park and in the end we just were too exhausted. I would have loved to go to this Tropical-Aquarium as I had heard many good things about but maybe next time, as we will live after this summer only around 40 min away from Hamburg.

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The Animals

It was very nice to go around as you have rarely and cage bars or similar in between the animals and yourself (actually only the bird enclosures have to safety measurements). We had a good view at each enclosure and could see all of the animals. I am saying this as I have been in many Zoos before where I saw in the whole day maybe only a handful of animals.

At Hagenbeck are Tigers, Lions, Bears, Horses, Giraffes, penguins, Orangutans, Elephants and and and, especially nice it was at the Elephant enclosure as most of them were standing at the moats and the visitors could feed them (with food sold near the enclosure, so no bad stuff here) and even touch their trunks. To prevent any kind of accidents several Park employees were standing behind the animals to check that nothing happens or that anyone gives them some bad food.

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Tiger going around
Meet the Alpaca
Meet the Alpaca

My wife also enjoyed her favorite animal, the Alpaca. Especially the Chinese “nickname” for the animals is pretty amusing 草泥马，cao ni ma which made the alpaca famous in Chinese forums. Mother-in-law also found some new friends, the goats. In the Zoo you can enter the goat enclosure and also feed them. As soon as she saw that you can enter the cage she ran in and we pretty much had to drag her out of there to go on…

Mother-in-law and the goats
Mother-in-law and the goats

Our little baby

We were there with the whole family so naturaly little Nathan had to come with us. We left our pram in Finland so I had to use some kind of baby carrier for the chest. Thankfully he is only around 6 kg at the moment so I managed the day relatively pain-free but as Nathan is only 7 weeks old he did not really see any animal. He was more concerned with sleeping the entire time. Later, when he is old enough we will go there again!

What to remember

We were a medium sized group (7+baby) but already this size can get annoying at time as some people prefer walking onwards wheras others want to check out the animals for some longer time.

Furthermore you should eat before going to the Zoo or have something small with you. Not that the prices in the Zoo for food are that high but because there are just too many people lining up to buy food. Besides, lining up for the food and eating it adds up easily to one hour of lost time you could spend going around.

What a cute thing!
What a cute thing!

For some further information check wikipedia or the German website

 

 

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People

Our ship cruise to Germany

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Yes, we made it. We actually survived the ship cruise to Germany without too many difficulties. Friday we went onboard the ship which left Finland at around 5.30pm and we arrived in Germany saturday(left the ship) around 11.30pm. As you can see it was a rather long trip, especially when you got only a tiny cabin for three persons, a baby and two bunnies…

I know, you want to see pictures but I have to disappoint you as I forgot my camera in our car and by the time I realized it they had closed the car deck. But on our trip back to Finland in three weeks I will take some pictures so you can see that tiny cabin from hell (of course nothing compared to public transportation in China during holidays!).

To sum up the trip:

  • I drank a lot of coffee in the restaurant
  • Bunnies start to be very smelly in a closed room after two hours (very very smelly!)
  • Mother-in-law does not hear anything at all when she is asleep (baby pooped out the smelliest and deadliest thing out ever so I was something close to screaming in agony upon seeing/ smelling it but she did not react at all…)
  • Trying to spend more than 14hours in a small bed is really hard work
  • Restaurant on ships charged inhuman amount of money for a simple buffet
  • Last but not least, baby does not care at all when drunk people are running and shouting all over the hallway

Now we are finally with my parents so little Nathan was able to see his German/ Finnish grandparents for the first time as well as his uncle. I checked out our new future home and don’t want to even start with the renovation because it will be serious hard work due to its very poor/ desolate condition. However I will just have to push through these weeks and have to try my best to make it a little more homely for later! After the apartment is done some when in the future I will post some before and after pictures and before I forget, I will have some weird stories about mother-in-law to share with you again by next weekend.

And now I am done for today, a bit exhausted from everything and I just realized that I used a lot of exclamation marks in this article! However I promise you something easier to read for next time so don’t be too harsh on me now.

 

P.S. this is my 50th blog article, time to celebrate for me by doing some sports 🙂