Few days ago we decided to organise our secretary which is filled with many important but also unimportant documents. Mixed in between was one folder with our wedding certificate, Nathan’s birth certificate, other important certificates and also our passports. Okay you might think what’s so special about few passports…well we are three people in the household and the number of passports is a bit higher than that.
Let me start:
Wife: Chinese passport
Me: Finnish and German passports
Nathancuty: Finnish and German passports + Chinese Travel document.
All in all those are 6 passports/ official documents allowing travel abroad and I guess it is a clear sign of having an interracial family.
Are those all mine?
I understand that the travel document is not 100% a Chinese passport BUT it allows him to travel to China without any visa!
Hopefully China will recognize soon dual/ multiple citizenship as it would mean for my wife that she could apply for the German nationality and maintain her Chinese nationality but also that Nathan would be allowed to keep his current greyish borderlinish triple nationality.
Thanks to the Finnish and German nationality both Nathan and I have a huge variety of countries we can travel to without visa but sadly this does not apply to my wife. A list of the strength of the different passport you can find here. This entire blogpost is partly inspired by a similar one written by Carissa Hickling from Everyday Asia.
Do you have several nationalities?
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My Chinese mother-in-law is gone now, she just left a few hours ago from Hamburg Airport and life goes on its normal path once again. This week was pretty busy as we had some little sightseeing tours in different cities around here which started with Kiel last week. The next stop on our sightseeing list was Lübeck, another port city in this state and roughly 45 min driving distance away from my hometown. I have been there before only for swimming competitions and once long time ago during a school trip and thus I had to check myself what to visit before going there.
Nice cafes are all over the place
Lübeck or the Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and has around 200.000 inhabitants. It got its Hanseatic title back in the day and was known as the “Queen of the Hanseatic League” during the 14th century. Even though the city suffered also a lot during the air raids during the second World War there is still very much of the historic center left. Lübeck is also home to Niederegger. I know, many people outside of Europe are not the biggest fans of Marzipan and especially Asians have a dislike for it however for most people here it is just wonderful.
Lübeck recreated with Marzipan!
Enough of all the background info and lets start with our little trip around the city. We had luck with the weather as it wasn’t so hot anymore as the previous days and a little breeze from the ocean kept the air nicely fresh. After some confusing ride through the city (thanks to the GPS device slowly failing me…) we arrived at a parking garage and we could start our sightseeing tour. Okay, we actually headed straight to the restaurant I had picked out as it was already past noon and our stomachs were growling. Our destination was the restaurant “Kartoffer Keller” (Potato Celler) which had a variety of different dishes made out of, guess what, potatoes! The restaurant itself is located in the historic vault of the old Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (somehting like Holy-Spirit-Hospital). It looked pretty impressive in my opinion especially as I havent been before in a restaurant located in a vault. I have only read about them such as Leipzig’s Auerbachs Keller featured on Henry Lee’s blog Fotoeins. I surely enjoyed my meal which was of course with potatoes (grilled potatoes) with egg, some unknown vegetables (all vegetables are unknown to me, I just call them the green stuff) and a steak, more than enough for me. The women however are not really fond of German food so they did not enjoy it so much. Nathan was a real hero and after he finished his own baby food he helped to empty his mother’s plate, he surely does love German food!
Part of the Kartoffel Keller
After this was survived we started our sightseeing tour/ shopping tour. Sightseeing in a way that we went through the historic city center and took some nice pictures and shopping as the entire city center is filled with stores those two women just had to visit. This gave me the chance to go around on my own with the camera. Lübeck certainly offers a lot of opportunities to take pictures however I faced the dilemma of being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photo opportunities that I gave up after a while and headed back in search of my family. Somehow this short shopping time was enough for them and they were ready to head back home but I decided to have a stop at St. Mary’s Church. This I did as MIL is a very religious person so I thought it might be interesting to take a look inside. However once we were inside and MIL realized that the entry fee was 2 Euros she didn’t want to go inside anymore. The entrance fee is basically there to finance the restauration work as this church got some years on its back and needs constant fixing as any other old building does but MIL did not really comprehend this and was asking my wife non-stop why there would be an entrance fee for a church…
Another part of the town hall
Though the day seemed pretty short in Lübeck we did in fact spent nearly half day there and the only reason to head back home was because Nathan’s dinner time was approaching. I certainly hope to go to Lübeck with my wife again in the near future as there is still so much I want to discover in the historical city center. One thing became clear during this trip: No more German food for the two women!
Town Hall
under the townhall!
Shopping street
Sign leading to the Kartoffel Keller
Entrance to the restaurant
My lunch 🙂
The “Holy-Spirit-Hospital” being restaurated
This pictures shows just how massive some of the churches are
MIL, Nathan and the little Devil
What do you think about entrance fees in historical buildings such as churches and what is your opinion about German food?
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It is once again time to say farewell to my Chinese mother-in-law. This sunday she will head back to China and thus her three-month reign of terror will come to an end. It has been her second time to stay with us for three months and it makes me wonder what is the difference between those two visits.
Nathan feeding his granny
First of all I have to mention what did not really change at all when comparing both three months visits. There is still the need for her to go shopping but then again she is just addicted to it. She is perfectly fine to be left alone in the Outlet Center for several hours or dropped of in some shopping district in a random city. Then there is the thing about taking pictures which only slightly changed. She surely still takes pictures and videos of nearly everything she sees but especially of Nathan. Every single day she wants us to take pictures of her together with Nathan. She is so camera focused that whenever she sees a camera just slightly pointing in her direction she starts posing, I am not joking. For example when we were in the submarine there were some guys from India taking pictures. So when they wanted to record the machines which were standing behind MIL she immediately started posing and putting on that “fake camera smile”.
So now to the things which have changed since the last time. She got better in cooking! Okay still there were times when she refused to put in any salt because it is too unhealthy but minutes later she would stuff herself with a litre of ice cream. But overall she indeed improved and these days I really love many of her noodle dishes which we have at least every second day. I think few of those noodle dishes I will miss till we go to Xi’an in August, something I would have not expected to ever happen with MIL’s cooking.
More posing with Nathan
There are also few new things which pop into my mind when reflecting about the past month. She really seems not willing to learn anything new/ get rid of bad habits. I think I don’t need to mention the lovely kitchen rag anymore but she still cleans really everything with it (I did secretly change the rag multiple times though). But there is another thing. Each evening when we try to get Nathan to sleep we take him first to our bed, play with him shortly and let him slip into his dreams. Each and every single day MIL came into our bedroom checking on Nathan when he is just falling asleep resulting that he wakes up again and being very very grumpy. To this day there has been no exception to this and she truly believes that he starts crying because he wants to be held by her…it does not even cross her mind that she is the cause of him getting so upset every night.
All in all I can say that the three months passed by quickly, actually too quickly as she was a big help when it comes to take care of Nathan and preparing all the food. My wife has less time these days due to her business and I am just trying to help out whenever I am able somehow. Did you notice that I didn’t show any pictures of the apartment/ kitchen? Well, it looks like a hell here and I do not even dare to check out the kitchen myself.
How would you survive in case your mother-in-law stays with you for three months?
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Crazy Chinese Family 