Category Archives: Crazy Family

Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Our new Home

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The renovation of our new home started in April during our trip to Germany. Perhaps new home is only a half-truth as it is on one hand our new place to be but on the other hand it is also a totally rundown apartment from 1972.

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Beautiful, isn’t it?

The previous owner lived there since 1976, tried to keep all useless junk in the apartment and to make matters even worse, he smoked there the entire time inside and in the end even up to 3 cigarette cartons a week! I believe now you may start to create a picture on just how messed up everything was there when we started. Sadly I don’t have pictures from before we started throwing stuff out but the several in the gallery might give you some idea how we struggled. These pictures were taken after most stuff had been thrown out and only some basic furniture was left.

 

I can’t give you any blueprint of the layout (sure I could draw one myself now but I am a bit too lazy for that) so I mention only the basics, 90m²/~968ft² with bedroom, children room, kitchen, bathroom, dining room, living room and most importantly for our little bunnies: a balcony.

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Every room is full of junk

In April we managed only to remove all the old stuff including furniture, wallpapers, carpet flooring and tiles in bathroom and kitchen. Especially the wallpapers proofed to be very hard work as nearly every room was decorated with Ingrain wallpaper, a nightmare glued to the wall…

Mother-in-law and my wife also helped a lot during the renovation process by cleaning the old radiators (there are several old cast iron ones!) and repainting them several times until they reached once again a nice white surface color. As the ceiling was very yellow due to all the smoking for so long time we had to prepare it before painting. This preparation meant we had to “scrub” the ceiling several times with a brush and washing soda until we could paint on few layers of special anti-nicotine color. At least my wife had some fun already by choosing the new wallpaper for each room with special focus for the baby room. Sadly we had not time to start put new wallpapers on the room for little Nathan as some guy still needed to fix a huge crack in the wall! (40 years ago the roof was leaking water in and that part of the wall settled a bit resulting in a crack in the wall…)

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Bathroom after I ripped everything out and had fun with the tiles for several days

Now during our time back in Finland some professionals are installing new windows and water pipes as those two things are the original setup from 1972 and not working anymore as intended. In September we will then finally move to Germany but we will have to stay with my parents for at least a month as the apartment is far from ready. Tile and wood flooring are still missing and not to forget that there is no bathroom or kitchen yet. After all that we will have some busy time buying new furniture as we are selling most of our old stuff here in Finland to make the whole moving process a bit easier to handle.

 

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 Family

Our Wedding in China

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Over the past years we had basically three wedding celebrations. First one was about two years ago and was a civil marriage/ civil ceremony in Finland at our local register office. This was just a small happening with two of our friends to witness it and we went out eating together. We kept it small as we had great plans for the following summer!

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The event is slowly starting

Last year then, one year after our civil marriage, it was time for the real ceremonies, one in China and one in Finland. The ceremony we had in China was actually called a “Thank you gathering” 答谢会 and was planned by my parents-in-law. I still remember that in the beginning it was to be a dinner with only the family in a nice restaurant. From there it evolved into a bigger dinner with family and a few family friends into a dinner with 100 guests. Don’t ask me how it developed like that as I had nothing to do with organizing it and had not even any idea at all about the size of this event till a month before it.

The location was in a hotel somewhere in Xi’an. I say somewhere in Xi’an, because I have absolutely no clue at all about anything what was going on, well, parents-in-law were organizing it and my role was to be there, smile, say a few thank you words and try to survive the baijiu 白酒.

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Table with relatives

In the beginning me and my wife had to stand at the entrance and welcome every guest. Now the curious part was that not even my wife had any idea who 80% of the guests were. She had not invited any of her friends, I obviously don’t have any friends there to invite so every person there was either family (extended family), old classmates of the parents, colleges of the parents or just friends of them. Later I was told that most of the friends of my parents-in-law were mainly coming just to see how old I would be as they expected most likely a man in his early to late 40’s, but I had to disappoint them…

It was especially interesting to see how there were several men waiting outside in the blazing sun for over half hour. When I asked my wife about it she had no idea what was going on until she asked her father. apparently these men were all waiting for the current boss of my father-in-law to arrive so they can greet her and guide her to the restaurant. Looking at them I felt very glad to be inside to enjoy the benefits an AC.

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People everywhere

Even though it was not a real wedding ceremony we had ten tables packed with people, too much food, drinks and cigarettes and of course a MC. This MC was the retired boss of my father-in-law and was doing, at least in my opinion, a very good job. Of course I had to say some things also on stage by repeating words and phrases the MC told me in front of everyone. Sure enough I gave the people something to laugh about and to this day I still don’t know what I said wrong.

After this part was done the food started and both of us had to go to each table, thanking the guests for coming. Now this usually means that at least the husband has to drink at least one glass of beer or a shot of some baijiu with the people on each table but surprisingly I was given always  tea, cola or other soft drinks. Okay, not always as there was the one table with the godmother and godfather of my wife which was at the same time the headquarter of the infamous booze-brothers. The friendly godmother gave me all kinds of things I had to eat at that table and the booze-brothers (godfather belongs to that crew) tried to fill me up with beer, baijiu and smokes. In the end we managed to escape from that table and shortly after the dinner ended rather quickly.

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Godmother and the booze-brothers!

Even though there was so much food we barely ate anything as we had our duty of visiting each table and by the time we were done the food was finished (well, the untasty leftovers were still everywhere but I prefer to have a proper meal). I think the whole thing was other in less than three hours but these hours were surely exhausting! Looking back my parents-in-law did a pretty good job with it but I am happy that is over as it was pretty stressful.

 

How is you experience with weddings, perhaps even a wedding in China?