Category Archives: Crazy Family

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son, Travels

The Madness of MIL Continues

May 1, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 45 Comments

We are now roughly two weeks in China and a lot has happened. The main part was that we were for nearly a week on a city tour with a tourist group. Though I have tons to say about this trip alone due to so many reasons I only have the madness of my mother-in-law right now on my mind.

As I have mentioned far too often is that she is a very strange person who is doing weird stuff non-stop. Besides that she is also a very unreasonable person who believes that everything she is doing is right and everyone else is wrong. No matter how clear it is for a normal person that she has done something wrong she is still able to twist the reality and comes up with all kind of explanation on why she is right. Even my father, who cannot understand a word from her, is frustrated and annoyed after this short time. To use his words “she is the devil in human form”.

I know I know I should not force her madness upon you my dear readers but I can’t help it. So I am very sorry but now I start with just a couple of things we had to endure. You know when you are sitting in a long distance bus but the seating space is just too small? In this situation you are always happy when the person in front of you wont put there seat back. Now we were on such a bus with even less space than usual. In fact my dad and I couldn’t even sit in the normal seats and got the front row with slightly more legroom. It was so small that the average Chinese elderly tourist group male had problems sitting there. Everyone, really everyone kept there seats straight except on particular woman. The shouting started just half hour into the journey and I knew immediately who was involved. MIL and the rest of the tour group had a shouting battle as MIL appearently tried to put the seat back even though the knees of the person behind her were in the way. This whole thing was resolved after the tour guide joined the fight but me and my dad tried to pretend for the rest of the time that we didn’t know that woman. You would think that she saw her mistake and learned from it but no. To this day it makes my wife nearly cry as MIL doesn’t see what she did wrong and according to her it is her good right to put the seat back, no matter if the person is in pain behind her or not. She even says that she would let anyone putting the seat back even in case she would be the person crushed. My wife just said “you would scream immediately and kill the person”…

The other thing is her attitude when it comes to phone calls. It happened now multiple times that my wife called her mother to explain where we would meet in the city or similar things. This is all fine but MIL tends to hang up in the middle of the conversation and blaming then FIL for not telling her where to go or when. The thing is that with their phones there is not this usual “hanging up sound” so my wife never knows when her mother is hanging up. When asking why she is doing it MIL just responds with “why shouldn’t I hang up, you can just call again and ask if I got everything”. Last but not least it comes to eating. At one restaurant they had a chicken dish which was really spicy even for my wife. During the whole dinner MIL asked my wife why she is not serving him this chicken, really the whole dinner. She just does not comprehend such things at all no matter how often you explain it. Can you even imagine how frustrating such behavior is?
Do you know anyone who is as crazy as my mother-in-law?

Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Travels

Going to China

April 17, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 45 Comments

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…

moving4 — The car is about this full once again

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?

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/

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.