Category Archives: Crazy Family

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

Hagenbeck Zoo

April 13, 2014 CrazyChineseFamily 9 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

For some further information check wikipedia or the German website

Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Living with mother-in-law

March 23, 2014 CrazyChineseFamily 12 Comments

Today I present you a new story of my crazy Chinese mother-in-law. In the past seven weeks she has been both a big help and a nightmare for us. Big help when it comes to supplying us with food (though there were some issues in the beginning) and nightmare for my wife when it comes to zuo yuezi 坐月, how to take care of the baby and in my special case due to cleaning.

I am not saying that my mother-in-law is not trying to clean up but it is the matter of how she does it and how she leaves her marks in our apartment, car and other places. First of all, it seems she uses the same oily cloth to clean the tables, ceramic cooking field and our glossy kitchen cabinets. Because she uses this same cloth everywhere, it kind of just smears the dirt all around rather than cleaning something. Now, no problem because I am responsible for cleaning the apartment which is usually a pretty easy job and furthermore because my wife told her not to try to clean anymore.

Now we come to the second point, the main issue. It used to be easy to clean the apartment, such as once a year cleaning the windows, once a month making the kitchen cabinets shiny again and basic cleaning all around once a week. In the past seven weeks I have cleaned the windows seven times, I cleaned every second day the kitchen cabinets and I am busy trying to clean everything else nearly every single day!

It basically seems she has an issue with using door knobs and handles, thus leaving rather oily hand prints everywhere, really everywhere. Have you ever watched a child pressing its face on a window to see something outside and leaving a nice facial print on the glass? Well, mother-in-law is the same, each window has on a daily basis new hand and face prints, the window where she sits in the car is one big mess, each door is full of oily hand prints. At first I did not know how every door and window can have so many hand prints each day until I went to the super market with her. There we searched for some ice cream for her and those were behind sliding doors made of glass. Now the average person uses the handle to open those doors (I know, full of nasty stuff) but she pressed her hands on the glass and opened them (looked kind of hard to do so). Well, I guess I have to just deal with it, six more weeks she will stay with us, I should be able to cope with that. Untill then I will have many more doors, windows and cabinets to clean.

Oh, before I forget, my wife can be really cruel/ mean sometimes. After I told her about my “observations” she asked her mother if her dad had already back in the day his OCD (cleaning everything three times etc.). She told her that in the first few years he was still normal but it changed shortly after they got married and moved together. My wife answered then “Now I know at least the reason why dad became so obsessed with cleaning the apartment!”. Both true and mean at the same time but apparently her mother didn’t get it…

Crazy Family

Visiting the cottage

March 9, 2014 CrazyChineseFamily 10 Comments

After all those blog posts about my Crazy Chinese Family I want to share with you some place I love to visit. It is the cottage owned by my parents somewhere in the woods of Finland.

In another article I wrote about the weird place called Kammi-Kylä which is just a short distance away from the cottage.

Now then, let’s start with that lovely place. According to ~~urban legend~~ stories told by some of our neighbors the main part of the building used to be a pharmacy in another little village and was brought to the lake some when in the 50’s or 60’s. It is estimated that the main frame was built in the end of the 1890’s but no one is sure about it anymore. The building is actually a log house but due to years of different owners with various taste the outside and inside of the building changed a lot. Nowadays there are at least three layers of different wooden planks of various colors added over each over in addition to at least two layers of planks in the inside of the building, resulting in a stunning 80cm (~31.5in) thick wall in the first floor. Thanks to these thick walls it is also pretty soundproofed, few years back few helicopters flew around the lake and over our cottage due to a rescue mission but my parents didn’t hear a thing. I bet I could be outside and shout my lungs out and no one would notice it inside. The upper floor is a bit different and has no longer a log house structure (damn you unknown previous owner) so the walls are considerable thinner.

Anyways, my parents bought the cottage when I was about six years old and renovated everything over the years to make themselves a new homely home. The lake where the cottage is situated is called “Nummijärvi” which belong to the city of Kauhajoki. Great names for foreigners and I advice you not try to pronounce it because it will most likely sound very very wrong and funny.

In my youth I spent a lot of time there (each summer at least six weeks and several winter holidays) but in the last years I have been just too busy to go there and especially now I have barely visited it with my wife. However this changed last year as we went to China for holidays and we needed a place for our two little bunnies. My parents advised us to take them to the cottage so they would take care of them and even better we would finally be able visit that place again.

nummijarvi11 — XiaoTuTu’s favorite activity: Eating

My parents-in-law were amazed by the place, the nature, the peace and I bet also by a little boat ride around the lake. They really liked also the possibility of going just into the woods next to the cottage and pick wild blueberries (they seem to love picking berries in Finland). According to them they would love to visit the cottage again but this might take some years as we will move to Germany and it is no short trip up to that house.

This year we will be going again but for longer time, once again because of our bunnies but also because my wife wants to relax a bit as my parents can help out with our baby (and I need to do some repairs on my car, D’oh!)

Do you have any place you love to visit now or in your youth?

My crazy Chinese Family I married into…