Category Archives: Crazy Family

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Uncategorized

She has done it again

March 22, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 40 Comments

My dear mother-in-law seems to attract chaos. Whatever she is doing something always goes terribly wrong or she has some totally different (ridiculous) expectation on how it should be done. As I have mentioned already too often MIL is coming to stay with us for three months starting in the middle of April. But until today it wasn’t even sure that it would work out.

The problem was all the paperwork for the Visa and of course MIL herself. First of all we needed to get few papers in order to even apply for the Visa. The first was the declaration of obligation from the city hall here in my home town. This declaration basically states that I am inviting my mother-in-law, the reason, the starting date, that we will come up with anything she might do wrong here, that she will return and of course papers from my work place showing that I have the needed financial means to support her stay for those three months. The needed income varies from state to state here in Germany and I also heard it might depend on the person you are speaking to at the town hall, hooray for the great German bureaucracy. This paper was rather easy to get with only a few visits at the town hall but we also needed to get a travel insurance for MIL. This insurance we just ordered online from one of the many Insurance companies in Germany and got it done right away.

Then MIL needed to get certain other certificates from China in order to have all papers ready for the visa. Those papers were the confirmation of relationship between her and my wife, papers proving her monthly retirement money and some other paper I have forgotten. Especially of the paper stating the relationship between her and my wife she needed a verified version and an authorized version (wonder why). But of course here it goes wrong just as expected from my crazy Chinese mother-in-law…she removed the verified paper from the other and sent only one! Yes, she went through all the trouble to take those two papers apart which were even stitched together because she…well even she couldn’t explain, the master of twisting the truth was not able to come up with an excuse. Furthermore she did this whole visa application process already twice before so it was really weird for her to suddenly decide to do things differently. Perhaps there should be a new word in the dictionary for such behavior “Crazy MIL”.

WP_20140927_015 — Guess we will “forget” MIL at the Outlet Center…

She only did realize her mistake after the embassy called her saying that this paper is missing. However it was already too late to resend it. Throughout the past days my wife tried to call several offices in China in order to fix this mess but they all were not able to help. So it was more surprising today to get the message that MIL got her passport back with the valid Visa. Right now I am not so sure whether to be happy or to be sad about my upcoming three-month madness. It seems that Lina from My Hong Kong husband tried her best to aid me in this endeavour as she offered several times to make MIL’s visit impossible but in the end even she failed. The only bad thing in case the Visa application hadn’t worked out is the money wasted…

So as you can see it is not that easy to get a Visa to Europe or to be more specific to Germany but it is actually mostly only annoying paperwork. Usually it is not even that difficult but this depends of course on the background of both the inviter and the person who wants to come to Germany. Now I am really happy that this whole mess is done for now and the next weeks I will prepare myself mentally for the 16th of April, the MIL arrival day. Perhaps I should start Yoga again or something else to find my inner peace.

What are your experiences with Visa procedures?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family

Why I love to travel to China

March 15, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 37 Comments

It is just in the middle of March but I look already forward to our next trip to China in the end of August. 2013 was the last time we were in China and we also celebrated our Chinese wedding in a small circle of relatives and friends (watch out, sarcasm). Last year we could not travel to visit my in-laws as we had too much on our hands with little Nathan and moving to Germany.

So why I am looking forward to travel to China or to be more specific to Xi’an? Most people would not really look forward to meet their in-laws again after having their mother-in-law at their place for three months but right now this is just a small minus point in my opinion. In Xi’an alone are so many places I want to revisit, take more video material and pictures. Furthermore I was promised (as so many times before though) to visit the relatives in the country side in Shaanxi. We are also planning a trip to Jeju Island and I really hope all those travel plans will actually work out as none had in the previous years!

But what am I really looking forward to? First of all Xi’an is a great city in my opinion. There are just so many interesting historical buildings within the city center where my in-laws are living which give great opportunities for taking pictures and perhaps also few time lapse shots with my new Flow-Mow. Then there is the food, just thinking about it makes me drool! There are so many restaurants I want to go to such as my favorite BBQ restaurant few minutes walking distance away. Besides when being too lazy to walk few minutes to the next restaurant there are still dozens of street kitchens just downstairs. As you can see, there will be never a problem to get any good food unlike here where we have barely any restaurants around.

But then again there are few things which really do stop my enthusiasm about those weeks in China. First of all is the pollution with all the smog in the city and surrounding area. Back in 2013 we had zero days in nearly three weeks of our stay with blue sky or sunshine. Everyday it was just smog and some more smog. Then there is the general attitude of not using trash bins. Everywhere people just throw their trash on the ground and even litter animals enclosures in zoo’s or nature reserves. What else is getting sometimes on my nerves is the complete lack of manners of some people. I think I do not need to go too deep into details as the this behaviour has been described more than enough already in other blogs. I know that you will find rude people all over the world but especially in China I have sometimes the feeling that there is an exceptional amount of people with an attitude like “First me and then the rest of you low cretins”.

ChinaHoliday5 — Barely can see the mountains which are just few hundred meters away…

But all in all I am still looking forward to this trip even though there is still nearly half-year waiting time ahead. For now I will have to make due with the videos and pictures I have from the previous years. Also all those blogs about their travel adventures keep my mind away from the daily boredom at work and the current cold weather. Perhaps also the fact that I just got once again a year older makes me want to escape the routine which we have in everyday life and get out to relax for a few weeks.

Are you also looking forward to your next holiday abroad? Do you also think about the negative points during your holidays?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Travels

Terracotta Army

March 8, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 33 Comments

Back in 2011 when my parents visited for their first time China we decided to take a look at the famous Terracotta Army. During the week my parents were in China we tried to see as much as possible around Xi’an. It was certainly not easy as my parents are not the youngest anymore but they tried their best. The excavation site with the museum is located in Lintong District, Xi’an. As we stayed in the city center it took us about 45min by car to get to the famous place.

During that day we had staggering +39 degrees celsius ~102 degrees fahrenheit. For unknown reasons we had the whole week already blue sky and hence less smog to protect us from the intensely burning sun. Nearly all of my memories from that trip are actually all about getting from one place with air-condition to the next without spending too much time outside.

Before we actually went to see the terracotta warriors we made a short stop at a workshop which focused not only one copying terracotta warriors but also making and reconstructing old Chinese furniture. Even though the whole place was basically a tourist trap we enjoyed it there as we did not go as a tourist group but with some family friends who know some people who know someone so we could actually skip the shops and concentrate on the art and have alook behind the scenes in that workshop. It was really interesting to see how they “copied” terracotta warriors but also how they custom designed few of them by modeling the faces according to some wishes of paying customers. Furthermore we could watch how they made a lacquer table and the many steps were explained to us. The place was filled with wonderful furniture and I actually would have bought tons of it in case money and luggage space wouldn’t be an issue…

terra8 — So much furniture and decoration!

After that we finally set out for the terracotta warriors. Even though it was so terrible hot it was still filled with tourists. The hardest part for us was the trip from the car, through the entrance, following the near endless path to the main museum buildings. Though in retrospect the way was perhaps only a 15min walk it still felt like hours. To make matters worse there were several places selling stinky tofu. The heat and the smell was near overkill for me and my parents, my wife actually enjoyed it though.

In the end we managed it to reach the main area. As my mind was badly effected by the heat and the stinky tofu I can not tell you anymore the exact layout except that there were several buildings and pits. We visited first the biggest building which was a museum with a collection of the artifacts found in that area. Needless to say it was packed with people and it was hard to take any pictures without any head poking into the camera. The best part for me was of course the fact that the air condition kept me away from the melting point. There were so many rooms to visit in that building that it took us a long time to go through it. In this case a tour guide would have been nice but it was also nice to be more flexible and set our own pace.

After watching countless of artifacts we managed to go to Pit 1. There are several Pits in various sizes but Pit 1 is probably most famous as it is just huge and has rows after rows of the terracotta warriors standing guard. I only have a few pictures as I was more concerned on video taping everything with my other camera while trying to survive the heat, yes the heat, as there was no air condition in that huge hall resulting also that we tried to hurry around and be done with it.

All in all I can say that visiting the terracotta army is a must when staying for some time in Xi’an but it is certainly not my favorite place. All the information you can get there about the past is certainly great but somehow I just could not enjoy it, it might be also due to the fact that I was near a heat stroke and thus my recollection of that day is messed up.

For more information about the Terracotta Army simply check out what Wikipedia as to say about it.